Primeval Series 6, Episode 1 - What Goes Around
by qjay
Summary: A triceratops rampaging through London, Connor and Abby's rocky engagement, and the return of Matt's visitor from the future highlight this first story in a theoretical "sixth series" for the show.
1. Teaser

**Primeval 6.1 **(Working Title: "What Goes Around...")

by qjay

___DISCLAIMER: Primeval was created by Adrian Hodges and Tim Haines. It does not belong to me. This is not-for-profit fan fiction, and no infringement is intended._

_SPOILERS: For the entire show through Series 5._

_AUTHOR'S NOTE: This story was originally written in script format; I'm in the process of converting it for posting here. It is the first part of my attempt to write a series of stories to stand in for a sixth series of the UK Primeval. I haven't seen the New World spinoff yet, so these stories may contradict it. Also, I'm not British, and this is my first serious attempt at writing fanfic for a British show. Please excuse any inconsistencies of slang or terminology that would not be used in the UK. _

**Teaser**

Not many people in the history of the world ever got the chance to see a dinosaur up close, much less chase them through crowded cities and witness them in action. Abby Maitland had always counted herself incredibly fortunate to be among the privileged few, but even she would have conceded her job was no weekend outing in the park. Well, generally speaking.

Today, as a matter of fact, it was precisely that, as a herd as Magyrosaurs- small sauropods from the Cretaceous era, a mere six feet in length, their long tails and whippet necks mere shadows of their Jurassic-era ancestors- had in fact materialized in a park in central London. Right in front of the ornamental fountain, bang: Now you don't see them, now you do, and suddenly a whole lot more people became privileged. Though judging by the amount of screaming they were doing, they didn't fully appreciate the honour.

Abby and her colleague, Captain Becker, pursued the beasts on foot through the middle of the park, firing hand-held rifles called EMD's: Electro-muscular disruption weapons, basically the world's greatest TASERs, to herd the beasts back the way they'd come . They ran past terrified families and interrupted games of football, toward the shimmering, refracted-light shape of the reality-shattering anomaly. Past it, the magyarosaurs' pristine pre-human world waited on the other side of time. Their job was to chase the dinosaurs back through.

Somewhere behind them, their team leader, Matt Anderson, and their colleague, Emily Merchant, were responsible for running down the things that had caused the herd to stampede in the first place: A hunting party of velociraptors, who intended to make a picnic lunch of their own out of such gentle, time-displaced herbivores. Just another day working for the Anomaly Research Centre.

"Matt!" Becker said, into the coms unit that connected the entire field team to the Command Centre back at the ARC. "We've got this lot in hand and we're headed for the anomaly! What's your status?"

"We'll be a minute yet," Matt's quiet, intense voice replied. "Next time, you get the raptors."

Becker laughed. "We flipped for them fairly, mate. No point in bellyaching."

So that made four out of five dinosaur hunters successfully on-mission. The fifth member of their team remained absent, but that didn't surprise Abby; Connor Temple was more than capable of getting himself lost between the front door and the curb, so he was nearly certain to go missing in a herd of surly sauropods. Sometimes Abby thought half the reason she was marrying the team's resident erratic genius was to keep him from getting himself killed out in the world on his own. The other half of the reason- he happened to be the best friend she'd ever had and the truest love of her life- seemed incidental at such times. She supposed she'd better locate him before he managed to stir up any further trouble.

"Connor!" Abby called into coms. "Where are you, exactly?"

"Right behind you!"

A confused Abby slowed in her pursuit, then stopped. _How could he be...?_

"Whoooaaaaaaaa!" Connor cried as he flew past, attached to the neck of one of the straggling magyarosaurs. From the look of things, he was hanging on for dear life.

Abby groaned. "Connor, what do you think you're playing at?"

"Not actually playing. Terrified. About to be sick."

By this time, the spectacle was such that Becker noticed; he returned to Abby's side, staring after the retreating Connor. "How did you get up there?"

"Eh. Long story. His idea, not mine."

With that, the sauropod reared up and bucked, nearly throwing Connor into the midst of the stampede. He jostled around, but hung around the creature's neck, white-knuckled.

"Connor!" Abby cried, worried now.

"Yep. Still here," he called back. "Eh... little help? Becker, maybe? Someone?"

As unflappable a soldier as Abby had met during her time at the ARC, Becker shouldered his EMD and fired, but missed Connor's magyrosaur with two quick shots.

"It's moving about too much! Can't you do something to steady it?"

"This thing doesn't exactly come with a saddle, you know!" With Connor draped across its neck like a pendant, the magyarosaur rejoined the last of its herd, thundering toward the anomaly. Connor shrieked. "Becker, in about ten seconds, this thing's gonna be back in the Cretaceous, and if it's all the same to you, I've already been there!"

Abby had been there, too; she winced involuntarily as the memory. Although, she supposed if it had never happened, she might not have a fiancée to be carried away by a rampaging dinosaur... a mixed blessing, perhaps, but he was all hers.

"Alright," Becker sighed. "Got an idea. Cover me."

As far as Abby could tell, _covering_ a man as he made a break into a madly stampeding herd of sauropods was a useless endeavor, but she waved her EMD in what she hoped was a supportive manner.

Meanwhile, Becker set his sights on a group of picnic tables that hadn't quite been trampled yet, vaulted to the top of them in two leaps, then sprang onto the back of the magyarosaur next to Connor's. He steadied himself there for a long moment, even as the tails of the other dinosaurs whipped around his head, threatening to decapitate him with a single, incidental swipe. Abby's breath caught in her throat...

Connor's sauropod bucked again, leaving him hanging off its neck upside-down. He yelped, bouncing up and down as it hurtled toward the anomaly.

"Connor!" Abby shouted as she tried to keep pace. "Hang on! Just hang on!"

"I'm doing my best, aren't I?"

Becker urged his mount closer to Connor's; they were seconds away from the Cretaceous now. Becker tried once, twice to climb into position for another leap. Abby didn't see how he could possibly make it-

To reinforce the point, the voice of Jess Parker, their team coordinator, drifted through coms: "Becker, Jess. You've got the anomaly coming up in-"

"I can see it, thanks!"

For a moment, Abby pictured the hurt-puppy look on Jess' face. She fancied Becker, had ever since Abby had known her, and she was sort of the team innocent to begin with. She was liable to take Becker's sharp tone as a rebuke. But Abby didn't have much time to worry about that; she had plenty of cause for her own anxieties.

She hefted her EMD and aimed at the last moment, desperate to stop Connor's magyarosaur before it carried him back to that prehistoric hell forever. But she feared the sauropod might crush him if it came to a sudden halt, so she held her fire for a crucial moment.

Becker finally made the leap between the two creatures, even as Connor was righting himself. Becker slammed into him shoulder-first, knocking them both to the ground as the next-to-last wave of magyarosaurs disappeared into the anomaly.

Only a few, last-ditch stragglers remained; Connor and Becker curled into balls and covered their heads as heavy footfalls thundered all around them. One sauropod, the very last in line, was headed straight for them. In seconds, it would crush their bones like-

Abby didn't care to come up with a simile, so she fired four times. Five. Half a dozen. She wasn't sure how many of those bolts struck home, but it must have been enough. The magyrosaur crashed to the earth in front of the anomaly- and directly in front of Abby's teammates, not five centimeters from Connor's barely-protected skull. She all but vaulted it to get to him.

"Connor, are you alright?"

"Ehhh... hope so, I think," he murmured, dusting himself off as he rose. He affected the pose he always thought made him look cool and in control, when really it made him look like a deranged marionette. "Yeh, I'm fine."

Abby gave him a fierce hug anyway. She'd lost too many friends chasing down anomalies to ever take such dangers lightly. She'd remember to be annoyed with Connor for sparking the mess later on.

Meanwhile, Becker climbed to his feet with an audible groan. "I'm fine too, thanks."

"_I'm_ glad you're alright, Becker," Jess said, a beat too soon.

When he was done milking the hug for all it was worth, Connor clapped his hero on the shoulder. "Becker, that was brilliant, mate. I really owe you one."

"Forget it," the ARC's chief of security scoffed. "Call it a wedding present."

Probably nobody else noticed the expression on Connor's face, but Abby did, and turned away in annoyance. Every time the wedding came up, things got weird between them. Part of her feared they'd put the big day off for too long, and had lost whatever momentum had been pulling them toward the altar. Connor's reluctance to talk about the subject- as though Connor was ever lost for words about anything!- didn't help matters.

To avoid the awkward moment, Abby marched over to check the sauropod, now abandoned by his herd. A quick check revealed him to be in fine, healthy condition, for an animal that had just had its neuromuscular system so badly disrupted that it collapsed over its own feet. Abby stroked its neck, feeling a surge of pity for the creature.

"We've got to get him home before the anomaly closes," she said.

"I don't think you'll have time," Jess replied. "It's already fluctuating."

Abby glanced up; after six years staring at glowing balls of fractured time, she'd developed a pretty good instinct for when they were going, and Jess was clearly right: Before her eyes, the anomaly shrank down to a pinpoint and vanished, leaving the park fountain flowing normally where it had been. Abby groaned; she nearly always grew to love those creatures that became stranded in the human world, but she never ceased to pity them.

"Well," said Connor's voice, above her. "Another one for the menagerie?"

"Him or you?" Abby asked, more sharply than she'd intended. It wasn't Connor's fault the magyarosaur had become trapped, and she felt rather ungrateful for snapping at him, moments after she'd been concerned for his safety. She allowed Connor to help her up, and squeezed his hand in the process to soften the blow. Then she turned and walked back the way they'd come. "Jess, we're going to need a support truck here."

"Already en route."

She wondered if Connor would come with her; he seemed to consider it, but remained in place while Becker clasped his shoulder. Through coms, Abby heard the conversation she'd anticipated:

"Don't let it bother you. Wait 'till you're married. Then you'll really see her cross."

"Yup." Connor sounded as subdued as Abby felt.

The security chief dropped his voice an octave. "Unless there's some reason that hasn't happened yet? You've been engaged for a year already..."

Abby winced as the support team came into view. She didn't feel like doing the mental mathematics, but it sounded right.

Connor didn't dispute it, either. "Since when do you care, Captain Soldier Man?"

"Just curious... as a friend..."

"There's a pool going," Jess' voice explained. "When you'll marry, when you'll set the date..."

"Who's getting cold feet," Matt's voice added. Apparently the velociraptors were finally in hand, and he sounded properly winded.

Becker said, "Just between us, it'd really help me if you could speed it up a bit."

_Me, too,_ Abby thought, annoyed with herself for being annoyed.

She especially liked the way Connor sounded borderline terrified when he objected: "You know this is my life you're talking about?"

"Come on," Becker said, "I'm on your side! Lester's betting Abby backs out before the big day. Or as he puts it, _comes to her senses_..."

"I'm still on coms, you know," Abby put in, though it wasn't the first time she'd heard the suggestion.

"Besides, you can't interfere," said another voice- Emily Merchant, Victorian time-traveller, Matt's occasional romantic interest, and the latest addition to their team. "It's against the rules."

Up ahead, Abby saw the woman herself coming into view, along with a ragged-looking Matt and a handful of ARC soldiers. Some of their jackets had been reduced to tatters; raptor engagements were always hardest on the uniform budget.

Becker noticed, too, and said mildly, "Trouble with the raptors?"

"Oh, no," Matt said. "They're as cheerful as ever."

A small knot of civilians followed Matt and Emily to the fountain. Abby could see a group of people gathered around Becker and Connor there and, come to think of it, more than a few wide-eyed stares directed at her, as well.

Becker seemed put off by their attention. He was a quiet, private sort of fellow who'd never even divulged his first name to his friends (although Connor, who went through the personnel files with regularity and could be induced to brag if handled correctly, had once revealed to Abby that it was, of all things, "Hilary"). Now he leaned over, resting his hands on his knees while he studied the crowd and caught his breath from their ordeal.

"You know," he said, "I really miss being top-secret."

As Abby finally linked up with that support truck, she heard something else: The crowd around her friends, and some of those nearby, breaking into applause- clapping and even occasional cheers. Abby averted her eyes from the admirers she passed; she wasn't in this for human acclaim, and never had been. She appreciated animals for their simplicity, and preferred her own life the same way.

In broad strokes, then, Abby agreed with Becker. She missed a lot of things about the way the ARC had been before New Dawn: She missed thinking of anomalies as wondrous mysteries instead of potential ways to wipe out the human race. She missed the time when dinosaurs had been thrilling and beautiful to her, and not the monsters that had daily tried to kill her in the Cretaceous. Most of all, she missed laughing with Connor, back when they'd been innocently falling in love- before arguments about secrets and commitments had placed one roadblock after another in their path. Abby had often been in danger back in those days, but at least she'd known where she stood.

She wondered if she'd ever feel that way again, and put the worry aside. Even for a time-traveller, there really wasn't any use in dwelling on the past.


	2. Act One

**Primeval 6.1 **(Working Title: "What Goes Around...")

by qjay

___DISCLAIMER: Primeval was created by Adrian Hodges and Tim Haines. It does not belong to me. This is not-for-profit fan fiction, and no infringement is intended._

**Act One**

It was funny, Matt Anderson thought, the kinds of things a man from an apocalyptic future learned to appreciate when he spent time in the pre-apocalyptic past.

Going through doorways, for example. In Matt's own time, any trip through a doorway might reveal a Future Predator on the other side- a horrifying beast with sonic senses and razor-sharp teeth and claws. Consequently, you never went through a doorway without performing a thorough pre-check of the room beyond it first.

Here in the past, in the year 2012, people just... strolled through doorways all the time. Never thought twice about it. Never even realized what a blessing was the relatively safety they took for granted. You could go through almost any door you liked, at almost any time, and have a very low risk of being killed and eaten! Quite brilliant, really.

Matt strolled through several doorways on his way to the ARC's Control Centre, flanked by Emily and Becker, with Connor and Abby bringing up the rear. His first team- his friends, Matt admitted to himself, for in this time and place it was safe enough to have friends, to grow close to people, without constantly fearing they'd be ripped from your side by some awful peril. Not that the team didn't face their share of peril, but here it was a 9-to-5 thing. It was possible to have a life on the side.

He caught himself glancing at Emily from the corner of his eye, as he often did in such moments. A remarkable woman, Emily- a time-traveller from the year 1867 who'd skipped through an anomaly a few scant years ago, from her perspective, and found herself in a world that mystified her every bit as much as it did Matt, though from the other direction.

She also happened to be quite beautiful, with her dark hair and intense eyes, but Matt had never quite been able to sort out what he wanted to do about that, in the long run. Until so recently, there hadn't been any time. No chance at all to plan for the future.

He liked being near her, though. Judging by the way she walked beside him, her hand brushing his every few seconds in a manner that was almost-but-not-quite intentional, she felt the same way.

Matt had travelled to the past with his father to prevent Philip Burton from bringing about New Dawn, and with it the end of the world. He'd devoted his life to that, they both had. He'd made himself the perfect soldier-slash-zookeeper-slash-temporal-troubleshooter, exactly what the ARC needed. It had been all he'd ever thought about. Now that it was done, he found himself almost at loose ends.

_Could I have a life here_? He wondered. _Settle down, start a family, be just a regular bloke? Would I even know how to do that?_

He wasn't sure. It didn't sound half-bad to him, though. Not at all half-bad. He'd found himself thinking about it more and more in the last year. At first, the idea had so distressed him that he'd invented ways to avoid it- immediately after New Dawn, when he was still stunned and half-exhausted from having narrowly averted the future he feared, he'd imagined he saw himself in the ARC's corridors, warning that he had to go back to his own, hellish timeline.

He'd actually put the ARC on high alert for weeks, while Connor and Jess went over every centimetre of the place for signs of unexplained anomalies. But nothing turned up and he never saw the spectre again; he finally determined the whole thing had been induced by shock. As much as that made his life easier in certain ways, it also unnerved him. Was he so distressed over the possibility of normality, so used to the apocalypse always looming over his shoulder, that he had to invent one where none existed?

That was when he'd started thinking about a life for himself, finding a way to leave the ARC behind. Someday, always after they'd put the next few anomalies right. When he was certain the others could manage without him. Someday. Perhaps, now, someday soon?

Until then, there was always work to do. Now, as they entered the Control Centre, he saw some of it waiting for him: James Lester, the ARC's administrator, loomed over Jess at the computerized Hub, awaiting the team with his customary air of disapproval. Placating Lester wasn't quite as difficult as dealing with Philip Burton had been, but it still required a particular tact, which Matt sometimes struggled to possess...

"Ah," said Lester, "the wandering heroes return. And I do mean heroes: We just witnessed your amateur rodeo and standing ovation on the news."

Matt sighed. "What are we supposed to do? Everything's changed since New Dawn. We can't very well deny the existence of anomalies after everyone saw a T-Rex trash London."

"You could try a bit harder," Lester said- smug, as ever, though stone-faced. Then he tried for 'reasonable'- not the most natural colour in him. "Look, it's a matter of the face we put on this. My mandate here used to be maintaining secrecy; now it's maintaining good PR. So tell me, whom shall I trust to cast me- and, of course, the project- in the best light? The laconic soldier? Future Boy and Victorian Girl? Or Beauty and the Beast?"

"Here now," said Connor, with his best cheeky smirk. "Don't call Abby a beast."

That got him an elbow in the ribs from his fiancée, but it was worth a smile to Matt.

"Perhaps you could get someone to fill Jenny's old job?" Abby suggested.

Lester looked like he'd bit into something sour. "Don't you think I've tried? To date, everyone who comes aboard to help me run this operation turns out to be either evil or too sane to stay for long."

"Or disappears from the timeline," Connor added, referencing the now-infamous Claudia Brown incident.

"_Not_ helping," said Abby, though she refrained from another poke.

Jess, ever the ray of sunshine, tried a smile. "You've always got me, James."

"So it would seem," said Lester, long-suffering. "Look, just... next time there are cameras, do try to keep appearances in mind. Remember, you're representing your government." He looked from one member of the team to the next, his gaze coming to rest on Becker. "That means no more mumbling your way through interviews."

The chief of security looked down. "I did my best, sir."

"_I_ thought you did a lovely job, Becker," said Jess. Then, flushing, "Why do I keep saying these things aloud?"

"I'm sure I don't know," said Lester.

With that, he retreated to his office, his expression one of general annoyance with the world- so, nothing new for Lester. When he was gone, the team relaxed a bit.

"I'd better go check on the sauropod," said Abby.

"I'll go with you," said Connor.

"Er- yes, if you like."

Matt didn't miss the slight hesitation when she said it, nor the undercurrent of tension that always seemed to exist between the previously inseparable pair. He looked down as they passed, wondering: _Is that what a life of my own would be like? Slowly losing the wonder of it all, familiarity always laced with traces of bitterness? If it can happen to Connor and Abby..._

Jess put what he was thinking into words: "You don't think they're really going to call it off? They always seemed so close."

"Not our business," said Emily, the practical one in matters of the heart. "Keep out of it."

"It's not easy," Becker said, almost to himself. "There's so much at stake in this job. Sometimes it's not easy, even if you come to feel something. You know?"

A beat later than everyone else, Jess realized he was glancing at her- as interesting a development as the old ARC had seen in some time. When she did notice, she turned a particularly amusing shade of crimson.

"I do know! Yes, I know that, in fact. Better than I know many things which... I thought I knew. How to stop talking, for example..."

Emily smiled at that, hiding the expression from Jess. Matt turned toward the door and squeezed Emily's hand before he walked away, shaking his head.

"Well, teatime's over. I'm heading down to my locker. That last raptor clawed up my best shirt..."

He made his way through the corridors a bit gingerly, mindful of all the aches and pains a man who fought dinosaurs for a living customarily endured, but his mood was mostly positive. He even whistled to himself as he rode the lift down to the lower level of the ARC.

After a moment, it rewarded him with a quiet ding and a door to his desired level. He stepped out, took a moment to get his bearings, and turned left down a darkened corridor.

Pretty soon, the hair was standing up on the back of his neck. Matt tried to ignore it; another thing a man from an apocalyptic future needed was a hair-trigger sense for danger, but here in the ARC, in the middle of his own home base, that sense was perhaps a touch over-developed. He made another turn, found himself facing the door to the lockers. He reached out to open it-

Something grabbed his arm. Matt turned in a single, fluid motion, his fist whipping around hard enough to shatter an opponent's nose-

The blow was blocked by a skilled opponent. A very skilled opponent; in fact, an opponent possessing exactly the same apparent skills as Matt himself. His own face, battered and bloodied, stared back at him. He saw his face reflected in his own eyes. Future-Matt, as he immediately tagged the other, reached out and cut his own connection to the coms system with a silent, humourless smile.

"You have to go back," he said, when they had privacy.

"What the hell...?"

"There's not much time left," his other self pressed, in precisely the same desperate tone Matt himself would have used in a dire emergency.

"But... no," he stammered. "This happened a year ago, and... we looked for you. We scanned this place with everything we knew. It _wasn't real_. I imagined it."

"Come on," Future-Matt told himself. "Have we ever had an active imagination?"

"But why? How? We're done with this. New Dawn is _done_. We saved the world."

"For a while," Future-Matt said. "We overshot with the first attempt. There's so much interference in this time, so many anomalies. You're ready to listen now. You must be."

"Who's we?" Matt asked.

"I can't explain now. Talk to Connor."

"Connor? What's he got to do with this?"

Future-Matt's grip on his own arm only tightened. "You have to go back, before it's too late. She's in danger."

"She- who's in danger? Emily? Abby? Why would I come back to save one-"

"Talk to Connor," his future self stressed. "Go back, while you've got the chance."

He opened his mouth to disagree with himself, but the future Matt vanished as suddenly as he'd appeared; one moment he glowed faintly with a golden refracted-glass effect similar to an anomaly, the next he might as well have been a passing thought. Matt took a step backward, restored his coms, but didn't know what to say. He stood staring at the place where his doppelgänger had been, wondering whether he could stand to bear responsibility for the fate of the world all over again.

xxxxx

In a dank, dirty alley in a bad section of London, a shimmering rip in the fabric of time sprang into existence between a trash bin and a puddle of foul-smelling, standing water.

It spun there for several moments, its secrets hidden from prying eyes on the street outside the alley. At first, it drifted in perfect silence, but then a harsh outcry drifted through it, the call of some terrible creature, untold millions of years ago.

A moment later, perhaps fleeing the originator of the cry, the thin, lithe shape of a birdlike dinosaur ducked through the anomaly. Bipedal, long-necked, and swift, it darted one way, then another, a large egg clutched between its thin forearms. Visiting scientists from the ARC would have termed it an ornithomimus; on the streets outside, it might have been known as a particularly large, particularly ugly ostrich.

It was not, however, a particularly brave ostrich-like creature. It ran toward the sliver of daylight showing from the street outside, but when an automobile flew past, it squawked in alarm, dropped its prospective lunch, and darted back through the anomaly; the better, perhaps, to face the dino you know than the dino you don't.

The egg bounced on the ground, rolled end-over-end, and came to rest behind the trash bin. The anomaly through which it had come was already closing, and the tiny creature inside the egg might have expected to die a quick, ignominious death out of time, deprived of its mother and of the Cretaceous atmosphere in which it thrived...

Might have, save for the warm, golden glow that spread across it, as though the egg contained a miniature anomaly of its own. A moment later, the eggshell began to shudder and crack as the small life contained inside sprang suddenly into action...

xxxxx

Becker was just turning away from the Control Centre, slightly unnerved by his awkward moment with Jess, when the lights turned red and the alarms began to blare, the universal signal that the ARC's services were about to be required by queen and country.

He turned back, grateful to have business upon which to focus. But even as he opened his mouth to ask about the source of the disturbance, the alarms disappeared.

"What was that?" asked Emily, who hovered at Jess' other elbow as the team coordinator's clever fingers flew across her keyboard.

"Jess, what's going on?" said Matt's voice through coms. "Do we have an alert, or not?"

Jess bit her lip; she always looked very cute that way. Becker tried not to notice.

"I'm not sure; I can't confirm. It could have been a glitch, or the briefest of anomalies. Doubtful there was any sort of creature incursion, either way."

Matt sighed, his weariness apparently. "We'll check it out. I'm... dealing with something at the moment, so..."

Becker reached past Jess to trigger the coms himself. "Matt, it's alright. No need to interrupt you over something like this. I'll take it."

Matt hesitated; typical ex-military control freak. Becker knew, because he was one himself.

"Alright," he said, at length. "Call for backup if there seems to be_ anything_ amiss."

"'Course."

Becker pulled away from the console- he couldn't help feeling conscious of his proximity to Jess- and grabbed an EMD from a passing soldier. He found that increased firepower generally improved his outlook on the knotty problems of life.

"I'll go with you," Emily said, falling into step with him.

"No!"

Becker blinked; that last had come, not from him, but from Jess, who all but bounced off her chair, face turning red. "Erm... that is... I'm going off-shift now, actually. Why don't I go?"

"No," said Becker automatically. "You can't go in the field, and I can't endanger a civilian."

"What danger?" Jess gestured broadly at her screen. "You saw it; there was nothing there!"

In point of fact, Becker wasn't certain how to interpret the blips and bleeps that appeared seemingly at random on the Hub's computer screens. But he did trust Jess when she said it was safe... more or less. It was the "less" part that worried him.

"Look, I won't even leave the car!" Jess insisted. "It's just so you'll have someone to call for backup in the _extremely_ unlikely event." She stopped to take a breath, tried again. "We'll just check it off the list and then... maybe go for a bite or something?"

Becker frowned at Emily, whose amusement with the whole situation was slightly infuriating. She wasn't going to help him, so he sighed.

"Alright, come along. Don't touch anything!"

As Jess fell into step with him and they marched from the room, he heard Emily's quiet voice behind them: "Well, if that's your rule, it's no wonder this took so long..."

"I heard that!" Becker snapped, and he was out the door.

If he'd stayed a moment longer, he might have seen Jess turn and give Emily a grinning, enthusiastic thumbs-up. Emily remained at the Hub, experimenting with the 21st Century gesture to see if she could decipher its meaning. Finally she shrugged and dismissed it.

Becker was already halfway to the car.

xxxxx

The trouble with ending up with the woman of your dreams, Connor Temple had long since decided, was that you spent very little of your time together dreaming. You spent most of the relationship wide awake, and waking people are beset by all manner of rubbish- insecurities and disagreements, expectations and resentments. Sometimes you didn't even know which ones you were dealing with at which times, and you just ended up cross with each other for no apparent reason.

Now, for example. He and Abby stood in the observation room overlooking the menagerie, trading barbs about- well, as best Connor could determine, they were fighting about their tendency to fight, while Rex the lizard fluttered outside the window like a concerned child whose parents were in the midst of a tiff.

"It's okay," Connor was saying. "I really understand if you're having doubts-"

"I never said that!" Abby protested. She crossed her arms and frowned at him with grave disapproval. "Look, you heard them! We've become the team joke! They're taking_ bets_ on us-"

Despite himself, Connor grinned. "I ought to get in on that action. Win a nice little nest egg."

"For what wedding?"

Faced with the disappointment in devastating blue eyes, Connor took a half-step backward and sighed. "I'm not going to set a date just so they'll stop talking."

"I _thought_ we were setting a date because you wanted to get married."

"Are you saying you don't?"

"No!" Abby tossed up her hands. "Connor, I don't even know what we're arguing about!"

"Because of a joke, I guess." Connor turned aside; he couldn't face those eyes any longer. "You shouldn't let it worry you, Abby. I've been a joke for years. It's not so bad."

He must not have pulled off the light tone he'd been going for, because his evident distress melted Abby's anger. That was one thing they'd always had, even back when they barely liked each other; they always had each other's backs when things got serious. Abby took a step closer to him.

"Now I _am_ confused. Connor, what's wrong?"

"Nothing. I guess- nothing." He sighed. "Thinking about the last six years, whether I've learned anything. Abby, I made a mess of things today- _again_!"

She shrugged. "It was fine. Wasn't a big deal. We saved the park."

"Well, that's brilliant. That makes up for the time I nearly destroyed the world."

Abby touched his arm; he still didn't want to look at her. "You've got to let go of that. No one blames you. I don't. It's been a year-"

"And again last month!"

Abby scoffed. "Oh, you didn't endanger the world last month. Barely even Europe."

"But it keeps happening! Right from the start, I nearly exposed us! Got Tom killed, got duped by Caroline-"

"Connor, all this was ages ago. Why are you even thinking about it?"

He shook his head. "Mistakes are what I do, Abby. Remember, me getting hurt? Getting us stuck in the Cretaceous?"

Abby squeezed his arm now; he could feel her standing very near him. "I remember you keeping me alive in the Cretaceous."

"That was all you. I was just someone to talk to. The last man on Earth." Now Connor did turn, looked right in those blue eyes, and said the one thing he'd always been afraid to say. "Don't you ever wonder if that's all it was?"

"No," she said. "I don't."

That one had struck home; he could see in those eyes the reply Abby wanted to make, the obvious question:_ How can you ask me that?_ But being Abby, once she got angry, it was game over. Connor had just made her _very_ angry, and that was probably another mistake, because he really needed her to hear this.

"You should think about it, Abby," he said. "I need you to think whether you ever would have chosen me if we hadn't- you know, run into some dinosaurs together. I won't set a date until you do."

"Fine," she said, too quickly. "If that's how you want it... fine."

She turned on her heel and was in the midst of- deservedly, he thought- storming out on him, when Matt Anderson entered the room, wearing a sour, uncomfortable expression that made Connor wonder just how much of an intensely private conversation he'd overheard. On the other hand, being Grim Future-Soldier Guy, Matt pretty much wore that expression all the time.

"Connor?" he said. "Have you got a minute?"

"Seems he's got all the time in the world," Abby said, and walked out.

xxxxx

Back in the darkened alley, the egg had been shattered through concerted effort, and a rather adorable baby triceratops sat surrounded by the fragments. Actually, it sat upside-down for a moment before righting itself.

The world around it, even the small snippets it could glimpse past its trash-bin shelter, must have been overwhelming for a vintage child of the Cretaceous; the baby trike shook itself, found its footing with some effort, and called for its mother. Receiving no reply, it tried a few hesitant steps toward the distant pavement in search of her. Squawking and tripping over itself, it arrived at the edge of the alley and peered out, wide-eyed. Another passing car nearly caused it to flee, but the dinosaur rallied. It turned its frilly head toward first one passing human, then another, but none of them seemed to be its mother, and so it remained confused.

Another car zipped past, and for a moment, the coast was clear. Rallying its courage, the baby trike took a couple of tentative steps forward, then retreated again.

It stopped, perhaps feeling unwell. The golden, anomaly-like glow spread across its body again; when it faded, the triceratops was twice its previous size. Heedless of the sheer impossibility of this feat, it looked around again. Hungry, perhaps, from the exertion of inexplicably doubling its mass, it bleated again.

It received no reply for the second time, but now it was a bold juvenile rather than a timid newborn. Squaring its broad shoulders and pushing forward on stubby legs, the young triceratops set out into a city full of humans...


	3. Act Two

**Primeval 6.1 **(Working Title: "What Goes Around...")

by qjay

___DISCLAIMER: Primeval was created by Adrian Hodges and Tim Haines. It does not belong to me. This is not-for-profit fan fiction, and no infringement is intended._

**Act Two**

When Becker's truck pulled up outside the alley where they'd registered the anomaly, Jess Parker was in the middle of a crucial calculation that, to her mind, ought not be interrupted:

_Jessica Parker-Becker? Becker-Parker? No, those don't work at all; it's got to be one or the other. Captain and Mrs. Hilary Parker- er, Jessica Becker. Not sure about that. Why does he have to have such an inconvenient name? You'd think he'd never even _thought_ about what it'd do to his future-_

"Jess!" Becker said, apparently for the third or fourth time. "I'm going to check it out. Remember our deal."

Jess had been reached for the door handle when he said that last; now she smirked. "I wasn't getting out. I was just_ looking_ out. You know, in case there was something to see. Which there's not."

"I'll be the judge of that," said Becker.

He primed an EMD rifle and was out the door, disappearing into the shadows of the alley. Jess waited a moment, then another. She began growing frustrated, and then nervous. Becker still did not reappear. She rolled down the window.

"Becker! Becker, have you found anything?" A long beat passed without response. "_Becker_!"

_So much for promises_, Jess thought, and reached for the door again. She hesitated; maybe she ought to call for backup first. But if Becker was in trouble, there might not be time for-

Something inside the alley went_ crash_, startling Jess into action. She grabbed an EMD pistol and charged out the door, into the very teeth of danger- hopefully not literal teeth.

"Becker! Where are you? Are you alright? Beck-"

Unfortunately, in her haste, she forgot she was Jess Parker, Heel-Wearing Computer Geek, and not Jess Parker, Action Hero. She stumbled over the curb and pitched onto the pavement head-first, arms splayed out uselessly as her EMD pistol fell from her grasp-

"Got you!" said Becker, who stepped out of the alley just in time to catch Jess in his strong arms. It was not the most unpleasant of situations, until he started gloating. "Do you even know what 'stay in the car' means?"

"Yes," Jess said, heat rising to her cheeks. "It means you're a control freak. _And_ you frightened me."

"Sorry," he grinned. "It's all clear."

Jess started to pull away, but didn't quite. Becker started to help her back to her feet, but didn't quite. They remained there, looking in each other's eyes. For a second, Jess thought he was leaning in to kiss her- or maybe she was-

"Well!" Becker said suddenly. "You should- I should- er-"

"Yes," Jess said, finding her feet. "All done here. Shall we have that dinner?"

Becker smiled at her, the way she always hoped he would, the way he never did in the office. "Yeah, I think so."

They turned from the alley. Jess reached for Becker's arm, thinking, _Oh, wow. This is really happening. It's really, finally working out. Yes, it really is. Yes, yes, yes, yes-_

"Hold on," Becker said, turning. "What's this?"

_No_! Jess thought, but kept it off her face with an effort. "What's what?"

Becker turned back toward the alley, knelt down in what looked like filthy water, examining a trash bin. Jess rolled her eyes.

"Becker, what are you doing down there? I hope you're going to change before dinner. Becker?"

He stood and stepped out of the alley, holding out his find- a few suspiciously large pieces of broken eggshell. He arched an eyebrow at Jess, who groaned as her hopes faded away.

Becker said, "I think you'd better call for that backup... and fast."

xxxxx

Matt stood in the doorway of the observation room, watching Connor Temple pretend nothing was wrong, and felt a great surge of pity. These two were supposed to be together; they were joined in all the stories he'd heard, all the legends of the ARC. But nobody knew better than Matt, real life tended to be somewhat more complicated than legend. Perhaps Sarah Page had known even better, or Nick Cutter. But those stories, too, got complicated...

"You know," he ventured, "most of the others would have bet money Abby was the one delaying. In fact, most of them did. I'm about to make a fortune."

"Look, I don't want to talk about it. Are you here for something?"

"Right. 'Course. I was wondering if you knew anything about-"

"Sorry," Connor said. "_How_ did you know? Was it really obvious?"

Matt shook his head. "Let's just say, I know when a man is making up reasons. That's all I did for most of my life, make up plausible-sounding reasons to cover my tracks."

Connor sighed.. "I wanted people to think it was Abby having doubts. I didn't want to hurt her."

"Good job."

The other's eyes flashed. "Look, you don't know anything about it! You only saw me and Abby after we came back; there was years of stuff that went before!"

The events Connor meant might have been playing across his face. Matt could guess at most of them; he'd done his research well. The Mer-Creatures... the outing to the future to save Abby's brother... of course, New Dawn.

"The argument doesn't matter," Connor said. "We always argue. Nothing good ever happened to us without a fight. I'm always saving her, you know, to make up for my last mistake. It can't be like that for the rest of our lives; someday dinosaurs will stop chasing us! You know, hopefully. We're gonna have years together, _without_ this. I need to know I'm not just some puppy that followed her around 'till she couldn't get rid of me."

Matt studied the younger man for a moment, his obvious discomfort, his outpouring of emotion. For a moment, he felt for Connor. Then he scoffed.

"No, still making up reasons. You're not that stupid, Connor. At least, I hope you're not."

"You might be surprised," Connor said, and a bit of his humour returned. "So, what's the truth, then?"

"Tell you what," Matt said. "Help me save humanity now; later on, we'll go for a pint and I'll explain the world to you."

"Fair enough, I guess. What do you need?"

Matt frowned. "I need to know if there's a way to time-travel without an anomaly."

Connor studied Matt for a long moment, perhaps wondering if this was some elaborate joke. Since the team leader was not known for his sense of humour, he ultimately gave up and sat down heavily.

"Eh... pretty sure that's a 'no.' That's why there were no astronauts about when they wrote the Magna Carta. Why d'you think it's possible?"

"Because," Matt said, "I just saw myself do it..."

xxxxx

With the existence of anomalies and dinosaurs having been public knowledge for a while, and the public's attention having turned back to the next series of the latest reality game show, even a herd of sauropods smashing a park didn't interrupt the day-the-day bustle of London for long.

Indeed, the same park was already back in use; a handful of young men were playing a semi-organized game of football on the same ground where the magyarosaurs had so recently trod. A few areas were still roped off, as workmen busied themselves cleaning up the mess.

By the evening, they'd cleared away nearly all the smashed picnic tables; new ones would be in their place by morning, no doubt. A couple of workmen approached the last pile of kindling, chatting in a manner completely free of wonder or even curiosity about the wonders that had so recently taken place there.

"This should be the last one..."

"Let me give you a hand."

"Nah, I've got it. You go on home to your wife."

The second workman laughed as though this wasn't much of a favour, but he nodded to the first fellow and wandered off in the other direction. The first workman addressed himself to the mess, but before he pitched in, he heard a slight whuffling sound from the nearby bushes.

"Ed, is that you? ...Ed?"

Frowning, the workman put down his burden and made his way into the bushes to investigate. That this was perhaps not the wisest way of addressing himself to the problem did occur to him, when he was perhaps halfway to the sound, and by then he couldn't retreat without feeling himself a coward.

"Oi! Ed! Come on, mate, don't play games! Where are you?"

He pushed through a bit of shrubbery in his path, and found no trace of his friend Ed. But he did see a lizard about the size of a pony, with three stubby horns on its face and a frill of bone around its neck. It was, he supposed, possibly the source of the problem.

"Hello, there. What have we here?"

The triceratops squawked a bit as he approached; it was munching on a mouthful of leaves, however, and seemed reluctant to abandon its feast over something so trivial as a human. It even let the workman run his hand across its muzzle, and made a pleasant little sound. The workman laughed.

"Did you get left behind, eh? Is that it? You're the first one I've seen, outside the news..."

The workman picked a branch full of leaves off the ground and held it out to the creature; the triceratops seized the branch and chomped it, then nuzzled the hand of its unexpected benefactor. Still laughing, the man took out his cell phone.

"There's a number you're supposed to call, I think. It was on the telly. The Anomaly... something something."

He turned away from the triceratops as he dialled the half-remembered number, which turned out to be perhaps the least well-advised thing he'd ever done in his life. If he'd thought to keep the giant lizard in view, he might have seen it glowing gold again. He might have seen the anomaly effect, shifting it in time before his eyes.

He might have seen it grow suddenly larger, its horns no longer stubby, but long and sharp, shooting out suddenly with enough force to impale the workman. The poor fellow screamed as he dropped his cell phone. The trike, now a powerful young adult, lifted him off the ground with a sudden start, then shook him off, panicked...

The body landed in the bushes somewhere. The triceratops burst from cover, racing toward the football game in sudden terror. This reaction found more than its match among the footballers, who decided quite suddenly to call the game on account of lizard-beast rampage. Pretty soon, no one even remembered the score.

The players scattered in all directions; the obvious problem with that strategy being, one of the directions had to be the one from which the rampaging trike had come. A single straggler stumbled, fell, and was trampled by the panicked beast. It seemed to be a contest, which of them could scream the loudest...

The beast must have won, because the man fell suddenly silent.

xxxxx

In the Control Centre of the ARC, a second-shift coordinator had replaced Jess at the Hub, while Emily Merchant made a show of looking busy at the computer monitors. It might have been a more convincing gambit if she'd displayed a clearer idea of what a computer _was_, and if Abby hadn't overheard her asking a technician how its inner furnace caused its face to glow with disembodied light. Quick learner though she was, she was still from 1867, and so it was an obvious bluff.

"Sorry," she told Abby, not quite making eye contact, "wouldn't you prefer to discuss this with Jess? She's been very curious."

"That's why I'd rather talk to you, isn't it?"

"Right," Emily sighed. She turned to Abby, giving it a try. "Look, I'm sure he's just nervous. Men often get nervous about weddings; that's one thing that hasn't changed in 200 years."

"Not Connor, though. Not like this. There's something else, but he won't admit it. It's like he's doubting everything we've ever done..."

Emily shrugged, perhaps trying to think what she would have done if her fiancée hadn't wanted to get married, besides throw a parade. "You're a bit of a mismatched couple. No offence, but does he have a point?"

For the twentieth time, Abby tried to think about things the way Connor wanted- the way he said he wanted. What if she could do it over, have Stephen and Cutter back alive, be the person she'd been before the ARC? She barely remembered that young woman now, but she tried. She thought back on Connor blundering his way into her life, into her flat, despite her best attempts at putting up walls. She thought of the endless conversations about sci-fi minutiae it had taken just to civilize him, and the fact that she now had the names of all the Doctor's companions unwillingly memorized. She thought of him blurting out things about being in love or wanting to get married, then being afraid to follow through on them. She did think of the times he'd almost destroyed the world, a few of them.

She thought of his dirty, bloody fingernails dug into a cliff face, as he prepared literally to plunge to his death rather than allow any harm to befall her.

"No," she told Emily. "_No_. I'm not saying the last six years have been perfect, but that's only because so much has happened, and we faced it all together! Of course he drives me mad sometimes; he's Connor! But it wasn't all his fault; it took me years to admit I fancied him. And maybe I'm not the easiest person to live with generally."

Emily looked down, just the hint of her smirk visible. "I didn't want to say anything..."

"We deserve this, something that doesn't go horribly wrong. Something happy, just for us, just once. I really want this." Abby shrugged. "Wish I could convince him of that."

Emily placed a hand on her shoulder. "You know, we had a quaint old custom in the 19th Century: We often spoke to each other. Don't tell me this, tell him."

"Yeah..."

Fortunately, the alarms started blaring before Abby had time to expand greatly upon her theme of soul-searching. She all but leaped to the Hub and pushed the second-shift coordinator out of his chair.

"What have we got?"

"Not an anomaly; this is something on the news filter. A rampaging triceratops."

"Oh, is that all?" Abby said brightly. "We're on it."

Even as she turned, James Lester stepped into the room and straightened his tie. "What's our situation?"

"Triceratops in the park, sir. Some footballers in danger. Law enforcement has set up a perimeter, and Captain Becker's en route with Jess."

Abby was wincing even before Lester spoke. "With...? I'm sorry, with whom?"

"Becker took Jess with him," Emily explained. "It was supposed to be safe."

"Oh, was it?" Lester smiled- that was always a bad thing, when Lester smiled. "Am I the only one keeping count of how often _safe_ gets completely botched around here?"

At this point, Abby stepped in. She got along better with the administrator than most; not well, precisely, but better. "Lester, it's fine. She's with Becker, and we'll be there before-"

"Let me talk to him." Lester crossed to the Hub in two long strides. "Right _now_."

The coordinator, a touch intimidated, pressed the proper control and got out of the way. A moment later, a voice crackled through coms.

"Becker. I'm a little busy now..."

"Oh, I'm so sorry, Captain!" Lester snapped. "Am I interrupting your staggeringly ill-advised sojourn in the field with an untrained civilian?"

Jess' voice said, "It was my fault, sir. I-"

"Listen carefully, Becker. Perhaps you've realized by now, I'm not an especially nice man. In fact, there's a chance I don't really like anyone or anything in this world- with the exception of that girl. If anything happens to her, you will answer for it."

"I understand, sir," said Becker. "I take full responsibility. I'll protect her with my life."

"Fat lot of good that did for Sarah, eh?"

Before Becker- or any of them- could react to the stomach-punch of those words, Lester reached out and closed the coms. Abby looked at Lester, looked away shaking her head. Suddenly her minor row with Connor didn't seem so bad.

Emily put it to Lester more succinctly. "You really are a bastard."

"Thank you, I knew that. Now _get her back_!"

Abby and Emily sprang into action; there wasn't anything else to do. On the way, however, Abby risked a glance back over her shoulder; Lester was brooding over the Hub, for all the world as though his surly demeanour wasn't just sarcasm. Since Abby had more than enough trouble with her own interpersonal dysfunction, she left it at that.

xxxxx

Back in the park, the triceratops was learning the rules of football. Well, actually it was establishing the rules of its own particular kind of game: Stomp all over everything in your path until it's dead. When you're done, you win and everyone else loses. Very simple game, very hard to play twice.

Meanwhile, the players were still practising their footwork, in the sense of running very fast while screaming. One fellow, undoubtedly picked last for one of the teams, fell behind the others and tripped in front of the oncoming triceratops. He tried to rise, but he'd hurt his ankle. In another moment, the dinosaur would crush him...

Becker meant to interrupt that moment. His truck fishtailed onto the field between the triceratops and the footballer, turning the creature off to the side at the last instant. Becker leaned out the window and fired several EMD shots one-handed, but missed cleanly.

A couple of the injured man's friends were coming back for him. Becker put the truck between them and the triceratops, providing what cover he could while they got him to safety. Then he hopped out of the cab and ran around to the passenger side.

"Slide over," he told Jess. "Take the wheel."

"What?"

"I've got to get a clear shot at it. Now take the wheel!"

Jess sighed. "Well, I suppose that's not getting out of the car..."

She slid behind the wheel, while Becker climbed into the shotgun side. Before he'd managed to settle in, Jess gunned the engine, throwing him back against the seat. Grumbling under his breath, he reached out to slam the door and leaned through the window, trying to steady his aim as they veered back onto the trike's tail.

The stampeding dinosaur turned off suddenly, and Becker pointed after it. "There! There! Turn right!"

"I've got it!" Jess snapped. "I know how to drive, Becker!"

Becker thought that a debatable point, but since they were gaining ground on the trike again, he supposed it was useless to quibble. He nearly had it in his sights again. They bounced along the uneven ground, nearly pulling up alongside it...

Suddenly, the damned thing started _glowing_. Becker blinked- surely, it was just the last rays of the sun getting into his eyes. But when he looked again, the triceratops was a good deal bigger. Very big, in fact, and suddenly too close. Its armored hide threw off sparks as it scraped against the side of the truck.

Becker flinched. "Turn! Turn! Turn! Turn!"

"Sorry, do you have any _helpful _advice, or are you just going to sit there quoting folk music?"

Jess wrenched the steering wheel aside. The truck turned away from the now fully-grown triceratops. She rolled the wheel, and they came around for another pass.

"What the hell just happened?" Becker murmured.

"It added mass out of nowhere," Jess said. "That shouldn't be possible."

"Perhaps you should explain that to it!"

They zeroed in on the trike again. A swipe of its tail nearly turned the truck into a convertible. Becker held onto Jess, who held onto the steering wheel. None of them seemed to have a great deal of traction, as the truck swerved crazily and went up on two wheels before slamming down again.

Becker leaned out the window once more. "Easy target at that size. Get me a little closer..."

Jess tried to oblige, pushing the truck harder. Becker saw the creature's great back line up in his crosshairs, and grinned. His finger tightened on the trigger-

The triceratops jerked its head, and the rock-solid frill of bone around its neck slammed into the side of the cab. Becker was knocked against his seatbelts and lost his EMD. Jess fought the wheel for control, but seemed to be losing. The world turned painful, red and hazy...

Becker caught a glimpse of the triceratops pawing the ground, head down and horns-forward, ready to have another go at finishing off the wounded truck. As it charged, Jess jerked the wheel a final time, missing a head-on collision. But the creature still side-swiped them, and the truck rolled cab over wheels.

Becker felt his world spinning crazily. He felt pain in a hundred places, broken glass showering his face, jagged metal poking his flesh. Somewhere very far away, he heard Jess scream...

And then everything went dark.


	4. Act Three

**Primeval 6.1 **(Working Title: "What Goes Around...")

by qjay

___DISCLAIMER: Primeval was created by Adrian Hodges and Tim Haines. It does not belong to me. This is not-for-profit fan fiction, and no infringement is intended._

**Act Three**

Jess Parker crawled out of the wreckage of Becker's truck, feeling somewhat surprised that all her limbs still worked. She tried to make a mental list of her injuries, but lost count after the millionth bruise, cut, or scrape. She was lucky, at that. If she hadn't managed to turn them aside at the last moment...

Something trumpeted, not nearly far enough away. Jess risked a glance around the side of the overturned truck. The triceratops stood a little distance away, regarding them warily. Jess took advantage of its indecision to scurry over to the passenger side.

Becker was slumped against his seatbelt, head lolling against his shoulder in a frightening manner. Jess hurriedly checked for a pulse, and didn't breathe herself until she found one. He was alive, but looked to be out for a while. Unless Jess was greatly mistaken, she didn't have a while to wait.

She began shaking him. "Come on, Becker! Come on! You've got to wake up!"

Thunder in the distance. Probably not so much thunder as the Triceratops of Doom approaching. Jess grabbed Becker under the arms and tried to drag him through the window, but it was no use. He was far too heavy.

"Becker, please! I can't lift you! You've got to help me!"

The chief of security stirred, moaned, but did not wake. Jess felt herself on the edge of panic and tried to catch her breath. Not more than a couple of seconds left- she had to get away, had to _run_. She looked up at the onrushing creature, glanced over her shoulder at the clear field behind her-

She was never sure why she didn't run, whether it was the part of her that had a crush on Becker or the part that so wanted to be like these people, these heroes she saw around her every day at the ARC. Whatever it was, Jess shook off the flight impulse and dug in again. She'd heard stories of people able to do incredible things in the heat of the moment, mothers lifting cars off their children and such. Maybe if she just pulled as hard as she could, adrenaline would do the rest. If not, perhaps her mutant super-powers would choose this dire moment to manifest. Or perhaps-

Perhaps an ARC truck would come tearing into the space between her and the triceratops, diverting the beast at the last second with some well-timed EMD bursts. Jess wished for this so powerfully, it took her a full five seconds to realize it had actually happened, and had not been just some phantom of her terrified mind...

Abby Maitland grinned at Jess from the driver's side of the truck; Emily Merchant had fired the EMD. A moment later, Matt and Connor leaped out of the back and took Jess' place in front of Becker, working him free of the vehicle and hauling him off the field, while Jess urged them to be careful of his leg, which had been caught under the truck's crushed console. His trousers were ripped and torn and slick with blood. Jess looked away, in time to see the truck roaring off in pursuit of the triceratops.

She caught a glimpse of Abby as she gunned the engine: an experienced dinosaur hunter, fully in her element, on the trail of Yet Another Creature that just happened to be the size of a tank. Jess shook her head, wondering if she'd ever be so fearless. One minor brush with a dinosaur and she was shaking so hard, she could barely stand.

It must have showed on her face, because Matt leaned close to her and whispered, "Hey. You did great. He's gonna be fine."

On cue, Becker groaned, and Jess took his hand. She still felt embarrassed to have been so afraid. But for now, perhaps, she'd done well enough.

xxxxx

Abby was just about convinced they had the triceratops in hand when she heard Emily, beside her, giggling softly. Abby looked a question at her.

"I was just thinking," Emily said, "wherever you and Connor go on honeymoon, it'll seem boring compared to this."

Abby affected a laugh, though she was rather annoyed to have the subject brought up again. Fortunately, they had other work to complete: Emily's EMD bursts tracked closer to the triceratops as the truck caught up again. It was only a few steps ahead now; Abby thought back on some of the trickier problems they'd faced over the years. In the big picture of things, this was hardly any challenge at-

"What's it doing?" Emily asked.

An excellent question. The answer, as nearly as Abby could determine, was: _glowing_. A golden glow, a mass of shattered light like the anomalies, spread across the creature's body. When it faded, the triceratops was suddenly old, withered, and stooped. It crashed to the ground in front of the truck, as Abby slammed on the breaks. The trike and the truck both skidded to a halt in the dust, the truck's front bumper stopping centimetres in front of the creature's bulk.

Abby and Emily shared a glance, having momentarily forgotten how to breathe. Somewhere far off, Abby heard Connor calling her name; he was probably already running toward the truck, to make sure she was okay. Abby smiled at that.

"That was close," Emily said.

"Yeah, a little."

As predicted, Connor came running up as soon as they stepped outside. He hugged Abby, then stepped back to let her get her breath.

"You all right? You're not-"

"Fine," Abby said. "Just a close call."

"More than that! Didn't you see it?"

Abby frowned at the triceratops. "Yeah, Connor, I think we saw it."

"Better look than I wanted, really," Emily added.

Connor took a step toward the fallen creature. "It lost mass! It must have burnt it off somehow. Mass has to _go_ somewhere! What just happened- it's not possible!"

"We've got a nice little line in not possible," said Emily.

Abby shook her head; she was less interested in physics problems than in a dying creature. "I'd better check it out. I've no idea why it collapsed."

She moved toward the triceratops, but Connor grabbed her wrist and held fast. Abby frowned at him, but he wasn't playing games. He was in deadly earnest.

"Look, be careful. It's not right."

"Connor, it's fine. I've examined thousands of creatures..."

"Not ones that violate the laws of physics!"

"Generally they only bend the laws of time and space," said Emily.

Abby was getting a little bit tired of the running commentary, and of the over-protectiveness. She pulled her arm away from Connor and advanced toward the trike.

"It's just a dying animal."

In point of fact, it was already dead. She knelt down beside it and began a cursory examination, but what she was seeing seemed flatly impossible...

"That is so weird. I could swear that was a healthy specimen when we arrived. The way it looked, the way it moved... but this one's ancient, practically desiccated!" Abby sat back on her haunches, thinking. "It was never out of our sight. It's got to be the same one..."

She reached for the triceratops again, to get a skin sample. The strange, golden glow reappeared even as she reached out.

"Abby! Abby, get away!"

This time Connor grabbed her and pulled her back, even as the golden glow spread and the triceratops... disappeared right in front of their eyes. Tired and confused, Abby mock-glared at her fiancée while she dusted herself off.

"You're going to be insufferable now, aren't you?"

"That can't have happened," Connor said. "Unless—"

Matt's voice said, "Unless it time-travelled without an anomaly."

He was coming up behind them with the Jess, both of them helping to support a shaken Becker, who looked like hell but hadn't departed the world yet. A rare bit of good news.

Jess said, "It was smaller when we got here. We saw half its life cycle in minutes."

"But the mass-" Connor said.

"Had to come from somewhere, yeah. I don't know."

Matt looked from one to the other and shrugged. "All right. Let's pack it up and get back to the ARC. I'm sure Lester will want an update."

"Oh," Becker groaned. "Good."

With Jess and Matt's help, he limped over to the truck. Abby remained behind for a moment, staring at the spot where the triceratops had been, wondering what precisely mankind had done to so anger nature that she took it out on her own creatures. But then, knowing mankind, maybe that wasn't such a difficult puzzle to solve.

Connor touched her arm, and she walked back to the truck, shaking her head.

xxxxx

The maddening thing, Becker decided, was how absolutely calm James Lester appeared. When he'd reprimanded Becker over coms, he'd been uncharacteristically emotional. Becker had been able to understand, at least, his genuine concern for Jess and his horror at Becker's hasty decision. Becker approved of those things, because he felt them himself.

But now Lester was back to normal: smug, haughty, belittling and self-aggrandising, and that was hard to take while standing on a leg that felt like it had been chewed off at the knee by mad velociraptors. Becker leaned heavily on his crutches and waited for the ARC director to display a small shred of human courtesy and invite him to sit. Lester did not.

"This really ought to go in your permanent file," the director said. "I'm willing to overlook it solely for the amusement value of you, Becker- pride of the special ops and all- being saved by a little civilian girl."

In point of fact, Jess had merely stood by him; the team had done more of the work of saving him. Becker did not think it would improve his case to point that out, so he merely cleared his throat and maintained his poise as best he could.

"As I said, sir, I take full responsibility."

"Yes," Lester said, "you do."

He looked Becker up and down, allowing him to stand for just that extra moment that would really hammer home the extent of his mistake and the pain in his leg. _Damn the man_, Becker thought, though he might have done the same to such a wayward subordinate.

Finally, Lester sighed. "You've been practically the perfect soldier for four years here, Captain. Perhaps I haven't said it often enough, but it's true. I trust you're done letting your personal feelings sweep all that good work aside?"

"Absolutely, sir," Becker said, as steadily as possible.

"Very well, then. Dismissed."

Becker turned and limped from the office, but that wasn't the hard part. Oh, no; enduring Lester was practically in the job description, and Becker had years of practice. The hard part was seeing Jess smiling at him when he got back to the Control Centre. So concerned, so caring, so... expectant.

"I was about to go looking for you," she said. "How bad was it?"

"Not bad."

Jess frowned. "And your leg- is it all right?"

"Fine," Becker said. "A scratch."

Jess didn't believe him, but then he didn't believe him, either. It didn't really matter, and so she brightened. "I should drive you home. You'll need someone to look after you. You know, we never had our dinner. Why don't I make something?"

"Jess," he sighed, "about dinner... it's not a good idea. At least, not now."

Jess stared at him in confusion- then past him, with something like fury, in the direction from which he'd come. "Oh, I'm going to kill James Lester. I'm literally going to murder him. And I know how to do it. I've practised."

For a moment, she sounded so matter-of-fact about it that Becker almost burst out laughing. He wondered what sort of fate mild-mannered Jess might envision for the object of her ire: Death by flowers, perhaps, or the marshmallow guillotine. But the hurt in her eyes was real, and Becker felt he owed her an explanation- honest, if not full.

"It's not about Lester," he told her in his gentlest voice. "It's about Sarah."

With the sound of future predators and screaming echoing in his head- as they did every night, but particularly loudly on this occasion- Becker leaned hard on his crutches and limped away from Jess. He feared she was staring after him with carefully hidden tears behind her eyes, but he didn't look back so he wouldn't have to be certain.

xxxxx

When he got back to his lab, Connor Temple took a moment to reflect on the days when his biggest problem had been deciding whether to have pizza or Chinese while he, Tom, and Duncan argued over which Star Wars prequel sucked the most. Thinking about those days brought up a lot of bad memories: of loneliness, desperate insecurity, and of course Tom's unhappy fate. But there had been a certain simplicity to that life.

Back then, he'd never had to work out how a disappearing triceratops was able to flout the laws of physics at every turn. Or whether his team leader, who thought he'd seen himself travelling through time, was a witness to one of the watershed events of human history or simply mad. Or why he'd wasted a year delaying the apparently simple decision to spend his life with the one person who made him really happy. When he thought about it in those terms, even the toughest decisions of that old life didn't sound so bad.

_Episode II sucked the most_, he decided, with the benefit of time and perspective. _I'm quite certain of that. No question._

"Connor," Matt Anderson said, drawing him back to the present. "About the- you know-"

"Time travel, yeh." Connor sat down at his laptop and frowned. "So what did he- I mean, you say? What exactly?"

Matt sighed. "I said, 'You have to go back.' 'There's not much time.' 'We overshot the first time'- something about interference from the anomalies- and 'She's in danger.'"

"'She' meaning Emily?"

"I don't know."

Connor felt a surge of fear. "Not Abby?"

"I don't know, Connor! Could be a future prime minister, for all I know! Whoever she is, history must depend on her."

Connor nodded. Still thinking of his old life, he said, "It's all very Terminator, isn't it?"

"I'm not having this conversation again," said Matt.

"Yeah, but you are! Futuristic soldier, sent back to save the world- you are so Kyle Reese!"

Matt's voice acquired an edge. "Connor, please focus."

"I'll bet you were sent back by your own son."

Matt looked away. "I was brought back by my father."

"How do you know he was your father?" Connor suggested. "Maybe he was secretly your son."

"I'm not my own grandfather, Connor! That's... strange!"

"I'm not judging, mate. I'm just saying, I know this story, and-"

Matt's fist came down on the tabletop with a _slam_, bringing Connor's teasing to an abrupt halt. Matt always had a bit of danger about him, but usually it came in the form of quiet intensity. Connor wasn't used to seeing sudden rage, and wasn't sure what to make of it.

"I wasn't sent back to amuse you," Matt pronounced. "I was sent to save the world."

"Yeh, and you've done that," said Connor, a little offended. "So what can't I have a bit of fun?"

"Because apparently it all went wrong, and I need you to figure out how."

"Yup," Connor said, mind racing. "Time travel without an anomaly. You want me to just... invent that? Like I'm Doc Brown or something? Cool. I'll whip it up on me lunch break."

"Connor, dammit-"

Connor met the other's eyes. "Look, I'm not just being difficult. I'm really not sure this is a great idea. Remember New Dawn? You were the one who told me not to fool with the rules of nature- you and Abby. Said it was exactly the wrong thing. Said it wasn't what Cutter wanted. And you were right, you were _so_ right. Now you want me to do it, just because it's your project and not Philip Burton's? What makes this any different?"

Matt stared at him, and something on his face changed. For the first time in ages, maybe the first time ever, he addressed Connor man-to-man, as a friend and equal, not as Future Guy With All the Answers humouring the clever little nerd from the past.

"Because for all I know, it might be Emily. For all you know, it might be Abby. That's what it means to live in your own history- anyone or anything could bring it all crashing down at any moment. I don't know who it is, or why it was important enough for me to risk the timeline by coming back. Until we know, it seems best to assume we all have a stake in this, wouldn't you agree?"

The stare lasted another second. Then Connor exhaled a long breath and went to work on his keyboard. "Yeah. All right. Cool. Tell me again what it looked like when you disappeared? Was it like the triceratops, all gold and transporter-y?"

"Yeah," Matt said, "kind of."

"And you definitely said the anomalies interfered with it?"

"Yeah."

"All right. I'll see what I can come up with."

Matt slapped him on the back. "Thank you, Connor."

"Yeah, well. You still owe me a pint."

"Make it two."

As Matt turned for the exit, Connor started building a simulation model, thinking how he'd at least improved his ability to make the big decisions. He was a Man of Action now, not easily stumped, not even by questions involving the fate of the Universe. Nothing could throw him off his game.

_Episode I had so much of Jar-Jar Binks, though. And those Trade Federation blokes... ugh. I need more time to think about this..._

xxxxx

A momentary lull in the men's room of a modern shopping centre. A lone fellow walked out after washing his hands, the door swung for a moment before settling down, and suddenly a glowing, golden anomaly appeared right in the middle of the room.

It probably would have scared some poor patron half to death, but that it was short-lived, lasting only long enough to repeat the identical cycle from earlier in the day: The same distant roar drifted through from the opposite side of the anomaly, and the same ornithomimus raced out carrying the same egg. It was startled (this time by some hyperactive shopper shouting to his friends just outside the door), turned, and scurried back home just before the anomaly closed.

The egg rolled back into one of the stalls and came to rest beside the toilet, where shortly it began glowing again...

xxxxx

Back in the ARC's control centre, Abby Maitland and Emily Merchant stood over Jess at the hub as alarms blared crazily for what felt like the seventh time that day.

"Not another one?" Emily said.

"I'm not sure what it is," said Jess. "It's still very weak... damn! I lost it again. It was just like the last one."

"Have you got a location?" Abby asked.

"Yeah, it's a shopping centre... well, that's odd. Look." She directed their attention to the computer monitors and traced a line through the map displayed there, from the park to the shopping mall to the Anomaly Research Centre. "It's on a direct line between the last anomaly and the ARC. I mean a perfectly straight line, right down to the millimetre."

Abby frowned. "You think it's homing in on us somehow?"

"Yeah, it's possible."

Emily said, "What if it's just coincidence, though?"

"That's possible, too. I need more data to establish a pattern."

"All right," said Abby, already moving toward the door. "I'll grab Connor. We'll get you whatever we can."

Jess turned from the Hub. "Abby! You understand, that creature aged decades in a matter of seconds. Connor was right to pull you away from it. Whatever's happening... I don't think you want to be nearby when it does."

"We'll be careful," Abby said, and exited along with Emily.

Jess remained at her station, wondering why so many people got killed and injured and terrified by these creatures if everyone at the ARC was always so _careful_...


	5. Act Four

**Primeval 6.1 **(Working Title: "What Goes Around...")

by qjay

___DISCLAIMER: Primeval was created by Adrian Hodges and Tim Haines. It does not belong to me. This is not-for-profit fan fiction, and no infringement is intended._

**Act Four**

When the alarms started again, Matt Anderson returned to the lab for Connor. After a stop at the armoury, the two of them met Abby and Emily in the corridor, on the way to the parking garage. Matt was already toting an EMD rifle, and tossed another one to Abby.

Emily grinned. "Come on, Matt, where's mine? A gentleman always retrieves a lady's... scary... light gun... thing."

Matt didn't even look at her. "You're staying here this time."

"I'm doing what?"

"I want you to stay here and help Jess."

"Because I'm so well-versed in 19th Century computer theory?"

"Because I said so, dammit!"

The steady footsteps of Matt's team following him into battle lost the rhythm. Not only Emily, but Abby and Connor as well, had drawn to a halt and seemed to be waiting for him to explain himself. Matt hissed out a long breath, trying to come up with another line of reasoning...

Connor stepped in first. "Actually, Matt, I can use Abby's help to get these readings, so you'll probably want backup to-"

"Is everyone questioning my orders today?" Matt snapped. "I'm not giving them twice."

He turned on his heel and accelerated his pace. He could feel the evil eyes he was getting from Emily and Abby; perhaps the last two women on the face of planet Earth he would wish to cross.

Connor knew it, too. He heard the younger man's apologetic voice echoing behind him. "He's having a bad day. I'll talk to him..."

_Good luck with that_, Matt thought, and stormed into the lift. To his very great chagrin, however, Connor slid through the doors before they closed. He stared up at Matt with an annoyingly earnest glare, seemingly giving him a chance to explain. When the team leader declined, Connor charged ahead on his own.

"Matt, listen: I know how you feel, but you've got to keep it together."

"It's not about my warning," Matt said. "We nearly lost Jess today. Emily's untrained, too-"

"Oh, come on! You're going into danger with a professional student and a zookeeper, so I think you're gonna have to do a bit better than that!" Connor took a deep breath. "Whatever happens isn't going to happen today. You wouldn't have told yourself to talk to me if there wasn't time for us to do something."

Matt frowned. "Did you understand that sentence? Because I didn't."

"Look, I'm doing my best here, mate!" Connor looked him in the eye; Connor didn't often do that, so he must have been serious. "Do you know how many friends I've lost, doing this? Every time Abby steps near an anomaly, don't you think I'm terrified? But there are lives at stake here, so get in the game."

Matt held his gaze for a moment; he could imagine few things less pleasant than the awkward end to a conversation in which you know the other bloke's right and don't want to admit it. Finally he shook his head and activated his coms.

"Emily, Matt. Forget my last order. You're coming with us."

Emily's voice crackled through coms. "Already in the garage. Sorry, did you think there was the slightest chance I might obey that order?"

"I had some hopes," Matt sighed.

"Beautiful dreamer..."

Matt rolled his eyes at Connor, who shrugged as if to say:_ Don't look at me. I've been living with Abby for most of the last five years. Do you really think I want any part in a battle of the sexes?_

That being an excellent unstated point, Matt rode the rest of the way down in silence. When they emerged into the garage, they found two trucks being loaded: Abby and Emily were stowing electronic equipment in one truck, while a second loaded with ARC soldiers.

"Careful with that!" Connor said, as the women loaded what looked like a laptop computer attached to a briefcase and wired to a couple of small satellite dishes. "That's new equipment, very sensitive!"

Abby indicated the strange device. "Is this what I think it is?"

"Yup. I just finished the final adjustments." For the benefit of the others, Connor explained, "Little something Abby and I have been working on. She needs a faster way to conduct examinations, and I need to feel clever. So I've modified my dating calculator to work on a smaller scale. It's meant to take a complete biological and temporal reading of a living creature in seconds. If we meet another disappearing dinosaur, this should tell us its history."

"I thought it wasn't ready yet." Abby wrinkled her nose at the creature calculator. "It's not about to blow up, is it?"

Connor made a face. "'Course not. Why do you always ask if the things I build are about to explode?"

"I think because of the time you blew up the DVD player."

"One tiny fire! I don't know what you're complaining about; it plays Blu-Rays now, doesn't it? We didn't have to upgrade."

"No," Abby said, "just replace the drapes."

"It's a small price to pay in the name of science, woman!"

Emily clapped them both on the back before preceding them into the truck. "Have I mentioned, you two constantly renew my faith in the power of romance?"

"Hmm. Bite us," Abby murmured, barely audible, and Connor high-fived her before climbing into the back seat.

Matt hurried around to the front before he could fully decide if he was amused or exasperated. Then he opened the door and decided upon the latter. Becker was waiting for him in the passenger seat, toting an EMD, with a brace on his leg and a scowl on his face.

"About time. Thought you'd never get here."

"Becker, get out!" Matt said. "You're in no condition to-"

"I'm in top condition. Only a scratch."

"Tell it to someone who didn't see you walk- or try to walk. You're down for at least a week, mate. It's not a discussion."

"Matt," Becker said quietly, "I'm not losing another one, okay? I'm fine."

Matt didn't even bother with a staring contest he knew he'd lose. He just slid in beside Becker and slammed the door with a hiss.

"Right, so apparently this_ team leader_ thing is an honorary title..."

xxxxx

Back at the shopping centre, an adorable baby triceratops stumbled out of the men's room and stared, wide-eyed, at the people passing all around it. It was not, in fact, the first dinosaur ever to visit a modern shopping mall (a family of velociraptors had that honour), but it was probably the first ceratopsid and so likely to create something of a stir.

First, however, it had to be noticed, and at this early stage, it remained inconspicuous. Frazzled shoppers, bored teenagers, and security guards alike passed it by on the first-floor promenade, while it wandered toward the dining options, perhaps wondering whether fish & chips or tacos were likely to taste more like prehistoric vegetation. People being self-absorbed, at first they didn't even notice the dinosaur at their ankles. One or two stepped right over him without so much as looking down.

It took a little child, with her new, curious eyes, to catch the first glimpse of the visitor from out of time. She stared, wide-eyed, then tugged on her mother's sleeve and pointed.

"Mummy, look! Can we get one of those?"

Once a commotion started, it was like a spell being broken. More and more people stopped and stared at the bewildered baby triceratops, murmured amongst themselves:

"Will you look at that?"

"What is it?"

"I think it's a brontosaurus or something..."

"Mummy, please can we get one?"

The bewildered baby triceratops stared around at them in terror. Perhaps sensing its distress, the young girl inched forward to pet it. It frowned at her hand in puzzlement, unsure what to do. Just then, it began to glow.

Somebody screamed. The mother swept up her child and ran away before she could touch the triceratops. A security guard hurried forward, shouting orders. By the time he arrived, the trike was in its juvenile form, twice as big as before and no longer so cuddly. The security guard turned tail and ran. Momentarily, everyone else followed.

Unfortunately, all this yelling and motion, in combination with the blinking lights and unfamiliar smells, startled the trike. With a panicked cry, it charged across the promenade, toward the sparkling brilliance of the nearest shop window. The triceratops ploughed through it as though it didn't exist, scattering broken glass everywhere while the terrified clerks dove behind the counter. The expression "bull in a china shop" seems appropriate at this juncture, but it should be noted, it was actually a jewellery store. Whichever, it didn't retain many wares of any kind by the time the triceratops shook its head, necklaces and pendants falling off its bony frill, and charged off toward the next shiny thing to catch its interest, leaving a shattered display counter behind it.

So far, it hadn't added any bones to the litany of things broken, but that bit of good fortune seemed likely to run out, and soon...

xxxxx

Back at the ARC, James Lester approached the hub, treading more carefully than usual. Partly this was due to the persistent ringing in his ears; partly it was due to Jess, whose every movement and gesture signalled that she just might box the ears of the next person to antagonize her.

"Forgive me, Jess, but is it possible our usual detector has been replaced by a prank detector whose sole purpose is to play hide-and-seek 'round the city, blaring alarms at random?"

"It's the newsfeed again," Jess said shortly. "The trike's back, in a shopping centre."

"Oh, dear, the Minister's going to _love_ that." Lester sighed. "Where's Captain Becker? The way this thing skips about, I want his teams prepared to go out at a moment's-"

"Becker's in the field," Jess said, cutting off Lester's momentum.

He wished he'd come up with a better rally than, "_Already_? Is he up to that?"

Jess turned on him. "No, he's not. But _someone_ made him feel it would be his fault if anything happened."

She turned back to her work, freezing him out. Rocked back on his heels, Lester began pacing the control centre. For a second, he almost wished he was more diplomatic, the sort of man who would know what to say when he made a mess of things. Of course, then people would probably want to talk to him more often, and really nothing good could come of that. So he put it out of his mind and focused on monitoring the team, although the hurt and anger on Jess' face was inconveniently distracting...

xxxxx

By the time a pair of trucks from the ARC rolled to a halt at the front doors of the shopping centre, the sounds of panicked screaming were clearly audible from inside. Matt Anderson tried to imagine what it would be like to go an entire week, or even a few days, without hearing anyone scream. Coming from where he did, screaming and death had been just a fact of life in his youth. At times, he rather wished he hadn't gone on to make a career of them...

Business before regrets. He led the way toward the shopping centre, flanked by Becker, Emily, Abby, and Connor, the latter hauling his modified dating calculator. Around them, ARC soldiers spread out in a professional manner, establishing a perimeter to keep civilians out and creatures in. The rest would be up to Matt's team.

"So what's the plan?" Becker asked.

Matt shrugged. "Connor, what d'you need in the way of readings?"

"A wide field would be best. Scan it from all sides to create a 3D image, almost like temporal sonar. I've rigged it up to an EMD device, so if we do this right, I should be able to stun the trike in the process."

"Alright," Matt said. "You and Abby set up the equipment. Emily and I will try to lure it into position. Becker, stay here and guard the perimeter."

Becker grabbed his arm. "Matt, I want to-"

"Not kidding this time. If anything happens to us, don't let it past you."

The other man looked away with a hiss. "All right."

While he turned to give orders to his soldiers, Matt led the others toward the wide double-doors leading into the shopping centre. He glanced again at Connor's elaborate device...

"When you're no longer a bachelor, can I have the dating calculator?"

"Not that kind of dating."

Abby said, "Would you really want Connor's, if it was?"

"Yeah, fair point..."

In three years hunting anomalies for the ARC, Matt had seen a lot of different creatures cause a lot of different problems. Sometimes, the hardest thing was just finding them. If you had, say, a lone raptor on your hands, or a camouflage beast, you could spend days just tracking down the source of the trouble. Those were the missions that drove you mad.

This... was not one of them. On the list of difficult-to-find creatures, a triceratops in a shopping mall does not break into the top thousand. You basically just follow the clearly-marked trail of destruction, walk toward the thing everyone else is running away from, and hope nobody tries to sue for damages. Matt and Emily only had to follow this trail for a minute or so through the rapidly-emptying shopping centre before the source of the commotion became obvious. He called a halt in front of a trashed video-game store, feeling grateful they'd left Connor stationed at the doors with Abby. The sight of broken X-Boxes might have reduced him to tears...

"Circle around that way," he said, pointing toward the side doors on their left. "I'll go right."

"Be careful," Emily said.

He held her eyes for an extra second before she departed. He wanted to apologize, but he wasn't certain for what. For trying to keep her out of danger? For placing her _in_ danger with his ridiculous, temporally-displaced lifestyle? For the whole thing being so damned complicated?

He didn't say anything, so she nodded to him and walked away. Story of Matt's life.

Dinosaurs. Convenient distraction. He circled around with EMD in hand, past shops and stands, escalators and lifts, heading toward the first-floor promenade. Just before turning the final corner, Matt hugged the wall and eased forward a step at a time.

A mall directory sign stood in the center of the promenade; at least, it did for a moment, until a hapless janitor took shelter behind it, and the triceratops- now the size of a strong, young adult- smashed into it full speed, knocking it over on top of the janitor. Matt stepped out from cover before it could press forward and crush him-

But Emily spoke first. "Hey!"

The trike whirled, and so did Matt. He could see her across the Promenade, EMD held on the trike, waving her arms for attention. In a moment, it would charge her-

"Oi, lizard boy!" Matt cried. "Over here!"

The triceratops looked from one to the other, confused in its acorn-sized brain. It was definitely going to charge someone, it just couldn't decide whom. Matt lifted his EMD, but was outdrawn by Emily, whose EMD burst winged the creature's flank.

"Oh, don't bother with him! I'm much more fun! This way!"

The enraged triceratops took this as a personal affront and screeched mightily as it built up to pursuit speed. Matt was shouting for Emily to run, but she didn't seem to need encouragement. She turned back the way she'd come and bolted, with the triceratops behind her and Matt bringing up the rear, firing EMD bursts of his own to herd the creature forward.

Just before it turned the corner after Emily, the creature glowed again, and the last swipe of its tail Matt saw was that of a fully-grown triceratops...

xxxxx

On one side of the mall entrance, Abby Maitland was struggling to lock one of Connor's mini-satellite dish gadgets into place when her fiancée came running over from his side. Of_ course_ he felt he had to check her work...

_No. Don't start a fight. I'm sick and tired of fighting. He's only doing his job._

"That's right," Connor said. "You've just about got it. One more adjustment... there! Well done!"

_There, that wasn't so hard. Now don't get all passive-aggressive and blow it with some clever remark, like-_

"You're sure it's ready? You're not just rushing it to impress us?"

"Abby! Would I do a thing like that?" Connor's innocent face didn't hold for long. "Yeah, of course I would. But I'm not. I really think it's our best chance of finding out where the extra mass is coming from."

"Chocolate usually works for me..."

She debated keeping Connor on the hook for the Only Acceptable Answer:_ No, my love, no amount of chocolate ever has, nor ever will cause you to gain weight_. But it seemed a trivial thing compared to the _crash_ that indicated an approaching triceratops. She looked up, eyes hunting for Matt and Emily, but there was no sign of them yet.

"They're coming," she said. "This won't hurt it too badly?"

"Like I said, should just stun it." Connor sighed. "Can't you try, just once, not to show such understanding toward things that are trying to kill us?"

"It's not trying to kill anyone," Abby objected. "It must be terrified."

"Still, this is no time for taking in strays!"

Abby smirked at him. "If I didn't take in strays, I think you'd still be bunking with Lester."

"See?" Connor jabbed a finger at her. "I knew you were having doubts!"

"Only about your sense of humour!"

Another _crash_, much closer this time. Connor looked up in alarm.

"I've got to get into position," he said. "We'll finish this later."

"Oh, could we?"

Rather than answering, Connor raced across to the other side of the glass doors, where he'd set up the other satellite dish and the base unit that looked like a bulky laptop. He entered several commands, then looked up.

"Ready?"

Even as Abby nodded, Emily burst around a corner from the other side of the shopping centre, head down and running at top speed from a fully-grown dinosaur. Even in the midst of trouble, Abby stopped at stared at it for a moment: she hadn't seen a live triceratops since one rather unfortunate incident in the Cretaceous involving a skittish herd, a large early grasshopper, and Connor's tendency to scream when startled. She was struck by the impressiveness of the beast, its size, strength, and even a certain simple grace. Nature giving up on subtlety and just showing off. Abby felt grateful, for a moment, that she could still see the triceratops that way- hadn't she been afraid, just recently, that she'd lost that sensibility forever?

Of course, now wasn't an especially good time for it, what with it bearing down on her and her friends with homicidal capability, if not intent. Emily was nearly upon them, and after Emily came the triceratops, and after the trike came Matt, firing his EMD. All they needed now was Connor's machine to work as promised.

"Ready," he hissed to Abby. "Readdyyyyyy... _now_!"

He turned on the scanner from his side and Abby pressed the button on hers. A beam of light, like a laser, passed across the entranceway in front of the glass doors, from one machine to the other, while they backed away as far as they dared.

With the triceratops gaining ground, Emily dove under the beam, skidding to a halt in front of the doors. The creature charged ahead, passing into the beam. Abby caught a glimpse of Connor's computer screen, and saw a 3D model of the triceratops sketching itself into existence. And then-

Then the triceratops passed through the beam, unstunned and unharmed. Connor turned to Abby with that look of wide-eyed, sheepish exasperation he did so well.

"Eh... run."

Abby glanced at Emily, saw her scrambling to her feet with time to spare, so she turned with Connor and they plunged through the doors.

"Incidentally, _this is why I always ask_!" Abby cried.

"I said 'should' stun it! Should! I didn't guarantee the stunning!"

They made it down the front steps and dove for cover on either side of the doors. Emily was only a moment behind them, but her sleeve caught in the door and she jerked to a sudden halt. Abby reached out to her, but there was no way she could get there in time. The triceratops was a second from impaling Emily before their eyes.

"_Emily_!" Matt cried from inside the shopping centre- also much too far away to help.

Emily turned back, saw the trike charging her with head down, failed to pull away, and squeezed shut her eyes. Abby kept hers open, couldn't help but stare-

A millisecond before the horror they knew was coming, Becker appeared on the steps from out of nowhere, pulled Emily free of the doors, and pulled her back down the steps, firing his EMD with his free hand. Abby feared they'd both be crushed, but as Becker's shots kept striking home, the triceratops staggered. The glass doors shattered as it ploughed through them, but it was already losing momentum, and the golden glow was spreading across its hide. By the time it crashed to the ground in front of them, it was a dying relic again.

Emily hugged Becker, who nearly stumbled under her weight, until Matt arrived to offer him an arm to learn on. The three of them stood together, tired and frightened, as the adrenaline boost wore off.

Abby found her feet and approached the triceratops- cautious this time, mindful of the warnings delivered by Connor and Jess. She knelt beside it, her fingertips barely grazing its muzzle, as it stared up at her with ancient black eyes.

"Poor thing," she murmured. "Why does this keep happening to you?"

She felt a presence beside her: Connor, his hand gently resting on her shoulder. "I did get a temporal reading on it. That part worked. If my equipment wasn't trampled, we can still sort this out."

"Yeah..."

The triceratops closed its eyes and didn't open them again; its chest heaved with a final, great breath, shuddered, and stopped moving altogether. Abby bowed her head beside it, feeling her eyes well up with tears.

"I'm sorry," Connor said. "I'm glad you're so compassionate. And I didn't mean- I don't want to-"

Abby stood and pressed a finger to his lips. "Connor, what does this mean?"

He nodded and put an arm around her. Abby buried her head in his shoulder and hugged him close. She suddenly realized why she'd been worried about losing the wonder if it all: it wasn't the danger that did it, or even the memories. She was making herself care less, so moments like this didn't hurt so badly. But if it was a choice between hurting, and never getting to experience these wonderful creatures, that wasn't much of a choice at all. Connor stood beside her, holding her, silent for once. There wasn't any need for her to explain; after so much time, he just understood.

"I'll round up the equipment," Matt said. He staggered through the broken doors, looking as tired as Abby felt.

They'd done their jobs again. Now they just had to hope it wasn't all in vain.

xxxxx

"Jess, we're on our way back," said Matt Anderson's voice, crackling through the coms setup at the hub. "The trike's disappeared again."

Jess frowned. "How is that possible?"

"Connor thinks it's not totally here to begin with," Matt said. "The anomaly is stuck somehow, and the creature's stuck in it- a triceratops trapped in a time loop."

"Speaking of phrases I never thought I'd hear..."

"Yeah. We're headed back. You can help Connor go over the readings."

"That's a good idea," Jess said, nodding. It wasn't precisely her area, but it would be nice to have some constructive way to help. She opened her mouth to ask how Becker was doing with his wounded leg, but thought twice about getting burned again. Then she saw something from the corner of her eye that made her forget all about hurt feelings.

"Oh, Matt?" she said. "Could you hurry, please?"

The anomaly had reopened right in the middle of the control centre, not three meters to the right of Jess, and through it, she heard the call of a prehistoric beast...


	6. Act Five

**Primeval 6.1 **(Working Title: "What Goes Around...")

by qjay

___DISCLAIMER: Primeval was created by Adrian Hodges and Tim Haines. It does not belong to me. This is not-for-profit fan fiction, and no infringement is intended._

**Act Five**

For the senior team coordinator at Britain's elite Anomaly Research Centre, Jess Parker didn't actually see a lot of anomalies, close-up and in person. In fact, she didn't think she'd ever been this near to one before. It really was amazing, the way it caught and refracted the light like the most brilliant Christmas ornament in the world. Jess could have stared at it all day. Of course, if she'd done that, she would have been killed by the dinosaur that emerged from it.

Actually,_ killed_ might have been too strong a term. The dinosaur was a gangly thing, awkward but quick on two legs, with a darting neck and clever, lizard eyes. At least its front claws were occupied with the large egg it carried, and it seemed as surprised to see her as she was to be seen. Jess tried to remember her dinosaur names, but they basically began and ended with the creatures the team had encountered, and she didn't think she'd seen this one before. It was like a raptor, but thinner and less threatening. _Skinnyraptor? Eggasaurus?_

_Whatever_, Jess thought. She back-pedalled from the hub even as the creature advanced, sniffing her station as though it might contain the secret to a tasty omelet.

If it continued, it might damage the hub and seriously compromise the ARC's mission, so Jess took proactive action. She picked up her rolling chair and used it like a lion tamer, attempting to nudge the dinosaur back into the anomaly.

"Easy. Easy, now. Go on back to your time..."

She managed to startle it and poke the egg out of its grasp. Unfortunately, Jess had missed the day in lion tamer's school where they taught how to avoid making the creature angry, and apparently depriving it of its snack was not the approved method. The dinosaur squawked and snapped at her, its long neck snaking forward and its snapping beak barely missing her flesh. She gave ground as fast as she could. When it pursued, she threw the chair at it and tried to run, but she stumbled against a console and turned to find the dinosaur practically upon her...

"Get away!" she cried, covering her face. "Shoo! Bad dinosaur- bird- creature! Shoo!"

But the dinosaur had her cornered. Cackling indignantly, it drew back its beak, the better to crack her skull with its next forward motion...

A too-familiar sound, and the creature jerked in two directions at once as its muscles spasmed crazily. It was being peppered by EMD bursts from behind; Jess ducked low and covered up, only to have the creature collapse on top of her.

She struggled underneath its weight, half-panicked, but then a hand clasped around hers to help her up. Jess caught her breath, felt the grin spreading across her face. She wanted to get just the right inflection: _Becker, I knew you'd come. I've still not forgiven you, but I suppose it's a start. Here, you deserve a kiss- a _small_ kiss- for your braver..._

"Oh," Jess said, when she was free and the face of her rescuer became clear.

James Lester handed an EMD pistol back to the guard he'd brought with him before favouring Jess with his customary sceptical glance. "Lack of enthusiasm aside, you're welcome."

At least Jess could use one part of her speech: "I've still not forgiven you."

Lester seemed prepared to let it go at that, but Jess nearly tripped as she disentangled herself from the fallen creature, and he reached out to steady her. To the surprise of them both, Jess fell the rest of the way into his arms and hugged him, to his obvious discomfort.

"Yes, very good. All right. You're fine, everything's... yes. You can stop now."

Jess sighed. _Ah, well, I suppose on some level, a rescue's still a rescue..._

The anomaly was already gone, vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Past Lester's shoulder, she saw the egg dropped by the new arrival. Unless she missed her guess, it was a triceratops egg, and a most unusual one at that.

"We should get that to Connor's lab," she said, "as carefully as possible..."

xxxxx

Fifteen minutes later, the whole team had gathered around Connor's work table: Matt, Emily, Abby, Connor, Becker, and Jess, all watching a prehistoric shell for signs of sudden movement. Connor had his laptop opened and hooked up to the scanner he'd devised; it displayed a 3D- actually, more properly a 4D image of the grown triceratops, next to a scrolling series of numbers and readings that even Jess struggled to interpret. They seemed to mean something to Connor, though.

"It's just like I thought!" he crowed after a few moments. "Jess, you're brilliant!"

"Er... thank you." She felt herself blushing. "I didn't realize you thought that."

"No, you see... somehow the ornithomimus and its, well, lunch... somehow they got caught in the anomaly and kept repeating the same few moments. But they kept their connection to the past. It's like- you remember what Cutter used to say about different evolutionary timelines?"

Jess, who'd memorized the old team files backward and forward, nodded immediately; Abby similarly nodded, though without conviction. Matt looked concerned, as ever. The others just tried to follow along.

"Well, I think the triceratops is caught in one. He's got one foot there and one foot here."

"What about the two feet that are left over?" Becker muttered, and Connor mock-glared at him.

But Jess was already working it out: "That's how the mass changes. We're glimpsing different stages of this alternate timeline."

"Right," Connor said. "He's not actually ageing or growing; he's being swapped out for his future self, over and over again."

"So how do we set him free?" Matt asked.

"Jess has already done half of it," Connor said.

"With a bit of help from Lester," Jess added, and had the satisfaction of seeing Becker's little grimace at the reminder.

Connor charged ahead. "By keeping the ornithomimus from going back into the anomaly, they've broken the loop. Now all we have to do is cut the connection between the trike and our timeline, and it should snap back to where it belongs."

Becker arched an eyebrow. "Can you actually do that?"

"Yep, I think so. I've got a few ideas."

"This is all very well," Emily said, "but why does it keep reappearing in different places?"

"Oh." Connor blinked, as though he thought he'd already explained that, or he thought it so obvious that he didn't realize it needed explanation. "This anomaly's unstable, and its connection to our time is weak; I think the magnetic force of all the anomalies we deal with is sort of dragging it to us. It might even be a side-effect of Matt's-"

The team leader placed a hand on Connor's shoulder; a glance between them, and Connor fell most uncharacteristically silent. If Jess noticed, the others certainly did.

Especially Abby, who frowned at her intended. "Matt's what?"

"Sunny disposition," Matt said.

"Now I _know_ you're joking," Becker groaned.

"Look, give me a couple of hours," Connor said. "I can sort this out."

Jess thought him a bit too eager to change the subject. Fortunately for Connor, the egg picked that moment to glow and tremble with life, focusing them on the problem at hand.

"Fast as you can," Matt said. "Jess, help him. Abby, look after the new arrival. Becker, go home and rest, mate. I mean it."

Emily reached out and squeezed the security chief's hand. "And thank you. For the rescue, I mean."

Becker waved off her sentiment. "Only doing my job. You lot would be lost without me."

_I certainly would be_, Jess thought, the bookend to the fawning remarks she'd allowed herself to make in the too-recent past. But rejection had a way of reminding you how to keep silent, so she held her tongue, even though Becker seemed to be half-expecting her comment. He didn't quite meet her eyes, nothing so ostentatious; there was just a brief silence where the words should have been.

"Right," Becker murmured, and turned rather ponderously on his bad leg before walking out with Matt and Emily.

Jess winced and looked away. She felt as though she was being cruel, but she told herself the opposite was true. If Becker still wasn't ready to let go of the past and take a chance, then he might never, and nothing would be settled by returning to the way things were. She might as well start moving on herself. It was better for both of them that way.

She watched the door for an extra second after he left, though, and soon she felt a hand on top of hers: Abby's. The older woman didn't quite look at Jess, just glanced at her sideways with an odd combination of amusement and regret, as though she knew this story very well. Maybe she did; everybody in the ARC knew the whole long story of Abby Maitland and Connor Temple. Their relationship had become so much a legend after their trip to the Cretaceous, Jess had never really considered that it might have been something besides a fairy tale to the people living it. Maybe it was really hard; maybe it hadn't even worked out quite the way they expected. Did that make it something less than legend, or something more?

Either way, Jess was fairly certain it required a lot more effort and sacrifice than either of them would have expected in the beginning. Maybe she was better off not going down that road with Becker. Maybe, just once, she should try shaking off the clouds and looking at the world realistically.

Of course, there was something deeply ironic about opting for hard-eyed realism by tending to a dinosaur egg, but Jess had become so used to such things, it didn't bother her much.

Connor ran his calculations for at least two hours, and Jess offered whatever suggestions she could to smooth the data. She knew computers about as well as anyone, but when they got to the mechanics of time travel, she just followed orders and tried not to sound stupid. Connor was so far beyond her, and probably the rest of the world, in the area of anomaly research and temporal theory, half of what he said sounded like snippets of some futuristic alien language.

The funny thing was, Jess thought he didn't even know it. He almost sounded embarrassed that he couldn't work the whole thing out more easily. Like Jess with the dinosaur egg, the impossible had become commonplace to him. He couldn't see how far he'd already travelled.

The egg hatched a few minutes after they got to work, and Abby immediately set about creating the proper conditions to care for a newborn triceratops on the work table. She was better with animals than anyone Jess had ever known, and might have been the only person on Earth who could substitute for the mother of a 65-million-year-old extinct reptile without a false note. What was more, she obviously adored the clumsy little creature.

Connor noticed, and turned a sly glance in her direction as she doted over it.

"You look very natural."

"Don't get any ideas," Abby said, adding in a lower voice, "at least not 'till we've set a date..."

Jess turned away to hide a smile; anyway, she had her hands full making the adjustments Connor requested to his scanner. After another minute, she tapped in the final command and looked up.

"I'm done here."

"Cool," Connor said. "Now, if I'm right..."

"Generally a big 'if,'" Abby chided.

Connor replied with a smile; their bonding over the unfortunate trike seemed to have restored his good humour. He entered a few final commands of his own.

"If I'm right," he repeated, "we've made the proper adjustments and this should be just like freezing an anomaly. Send him right back to his own time."

"Only one way to find out," Jess said.

Connor pointed to a spot on the floor. "Abby, set him down over there, away from the computers. I've lost hard drives to experiments in the past- and yes, before you ask, I'm sure it's safe for him."

Abby smirked at the anticipated question, but her smile turned sad as she reached for the baby trike. "Come on, darling. Time to go home."

"Be careful if it starts to-"

The last word was probably _glow_, but Connor cut off with a sudden squawk. The triceratops started its time-shift cycle with Abby cradling it in her arms, and the glow spread from it to her. Abby barely had time to gasp.

"Abby! No!"

Connor tried to pull her away, but he was a hair too late and became caught in the effect himself, his face a mask of shock and pain as the golden glow spread up his arm to his torso. Which left Jess alone in a room with a computer program she barely understood and two of her friends potentially dying.

"No...!"

The trike began to change, and so did Abby and Connor. Gray hairs and worry lines appeared, but shimmering and ethereal- as though their older selves were superimposed over their younger selves, like an old, double-exposed photo. Jess started entering commands, unsure what she was looking for, desperate to reverse the process before the golden glow faded. Abby and Connor weren't trapped in a time loop; there would be no second chances if she couldn't help them...

"Jess!" Connor hissed, his voice sounding withered and faded. "Start the program! You've got to cut the connection, or we're done for!"

"I'm trying! Is this file encrypted? It won't open!"

The glow intensified; Abby gasped, and Connor howled with pain. "Jess, you know this! If you don't cut it _right now_..."

"One more second... got it!"

Jess pounded the enter key with all her might, triggering Connor's scanner device. It emitted a pulse from the satellite-like attachments, a sound at the very limit of her hearing. The golden glow froze before swallowing up her friends for good. Even as Jess caught her breath, the glow began to recede...

Then, abruptly, it vanished, along with the infant triceratops. Abby pitched forward, but Connor caught her and she buried herself in his arms. For a moment, Jess couldn't see their faces..

"Are you two all right? I mean, you're not- someone else?"

Connor met her eyes, looking every bit as boyish and vital as she remembered. Abby was her old self, too. Jess shut down the program with a sigh.

"You interrupted the process," Connor said. "Never doubted you for a second."

"Against that sad excuse for encryption? I hope not. You, sir, have been hacked."

"Really good job," Abby said, and laughed. Then a puzzled look flashed across her face. "Funny thing, though... when the timelines merged, for just a second... I could see what she saw. My older self."

"Me, too," Connor said, and a little smile passed between them that Jess couldn't interpret. "I did say I wanted to grow old together."

"Yeah," Abby agreed. "Let's not do it for a while, though..."

They started laughing then, and Jess joined in to be polite, but she didn't really feel it. She was still thinking about that smile, what it might have meant, and what it said about her own life.

Maybe she wasn't done dreaming just yet...

xxxxx

The triceratops was safely returned to its time, the danger had passed, and it was time for James Lester's least favourite pursuit of all time. It involved saying two words he despised more than any two words in the English language, except for _group hug_. (Or, perhaps,_ future predator_. He still used a cane in bad weather, courtesy of his last encounter with those damned things.)

The words he needed now were a bit more commonplace, but Lester made a practice of only using them to his wife, and then only in emergencies. But, desperate times...

He waited beside the Hub while Jess shut down her work and the main lights dimmed. It seemed to take her a minute to reconcile herself to the idea that he wasn't going away. She finally turned with a sigh.

"Can I help you, sir?"

"Yes, Jess. Er..."

_Just say it_, Lester thought._ Just look her in the eye and say you're sorry. It will be over in ten seconds, and then you'll never have to speak of it again._

He found he couldn't, however- couldn't say it, and couldn't even meet her eyes. So he fished for other words that would convey the same sentiment.

"I wanted to mention- that is, the things I said to Becker- they were only because of my concern for you."

"I know," Jess said, cracking a smile. "By your standards, it was very sweet. But still pretty horrible for anyone else."

"Er... yes, quite." Lester took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. "Miss Parker, there's just one further task I should like you to complete..."

xxxxx

While sitting opposite Connor Temple in a corner booth at the most tolerable pub to be found within a ten-minute journey of the Anomaly Research Centre, Matt Anderson watched his own reflection in an empty glass of beer and wondered about the future. He'd spent a lot of time in his thinking thinking about the Future with a capital 'F'- the future of mankind, the fate of humanity. But now he was thinking about his personal future, and that was much trickier.

The thing that kept bothering him was that he'd come back in time again, put himself through this utter hell a second time, apparently to change the destiny of one person. It was possible- conceivable, anyway- this person was a linchpin of history, absolutely vital to the protection of the world. But wasn't it also possible- at least equally likely- that once they let the genie of free access to time travel out of the bottle, no one could resist abusing that power? Not even Matt himself? Just because he saw his own face on this new challenge, he assumed he could trust it. But suppose that wasn't true; suppose it had more to do with that old aphorism about choosing your enemies carefully, since you will become like them?

_Suppose Connor's right and I'm Philip Burton this time?_ Matt thought._ Burton nearly destroyed everything for the sake of his ego. What would I break the world for? Emily? A future relative- a daughter, perhaps? A friend? And what if I'm not even selfish- what if I'm just wrong?_

Fortunately, the server arrived just then with a second round; Connor accepted his glass and clinked it against Matt's.

"Cheers, mate."

"Cheers," Matt said, and took a sip. He placed his glass carefully on the table in front of him and took a deep breath. "Connor, this technique you used to send back the triceratops... am I right in thinking it could be used..."

"To time-travel without an anomaly?" Connor shrugged. "Yeah, with some work. The thought occurred to me." The younger man seemed to hesitate; then his words came in a rush. "Matt, are you absolutely sure..."

"It won't be like last time," Matt said, and hoped it was true. "As soon as we know what's going on- if what we suspect is even possible- we'll tell the others everything. No lying to Abby, I promise."

Connor didn't look so certain. He'd more than earned the right to be wary, but he trusted Matt, maybe too much. He dropped the matter with a shrug.

"Speaking of Abby, you were going to explain the world."

"That's right, I was." Matt sipped his beer. "I'm afraid it's pretty simple: You're scared."

Connor grinned. "Of Abby? Yup, a little bit. It's always been part of the appeal. And now she's going to be Abby Temple, which is like a million times as scary..."

"You're not scared of Abby Temple." Matt looked him in the eye. "You're scared of Connor Temple."

"Really?"

"Yeah," Matt said. "All this talk about people you've lost, things you could have done different, that's what it comes down to. You've changed in the last six years, and you were running too fast to realize it 'till now."

Connor shook his head. "It's more than that. Look, when Cutter was alive, we had him to the flat one time. For dinner, after a tough anomaly. Abby and I were getting on well that day- laughing, and all- and I saw him looking at us. Staring, like he was surprised. Like we weren't supposed to be that way.

"Maybe in the original timeline, the one with Claudia Brown, maybe we were different. Maybe I never had a chance with Abby there. Maybe, literally, none of this should have happened."

"It'd be easy to believe that, wouldn't it?" Matt said. "Easy to go back to your old life, obsessing over video games and conspiracy theories. Must have been nice, not to have anyone rely on you. You can still have that, Connor: Pitch it all, leave tomorrow, never talk to Abby again. Is that what you want?"

"Of course not," Connor said. "I didn't mean that."

"Well, if you stay, you'll have to admit things have changed. You're not_ just_ a geek. You're a hero and a world-class genius. That's the man she fell in love with, and that terrifies you. The thing is, you'd never hurt Abby- you're more scared of hurting her than of destroying the timeline- so if you choose her, you'll have to be that man forever. You'll have to save the world."

"I've already saved the world!" Connor objected. "Three or four times, actually. Ask me, the world's getting greedy."

"I don't mean as a follower, as part of the team. Sooner or later, you'll have to make the call. It'll be on you, all of it. You have to make your peace with that."

"Yeah," Connor said. He fell silent, staring alternately at his beer and the tabletop. After a minute, he looked up at Matt. "You're pretty smart for a second-hand Kyle Reese."

"I do a lot of thinking." Matt managed a smile. "Cheer up, mate. You're a better man than you were, and you're in love. It's not such a sad story, really."

Connor lifted his glass and clinked it against Matt's again. He raised the glass, but stopped without drinking. With the air of a man on a mission, he put it down on the table and stood.

"Think I'll go find Abby."

"I'll drink this for you, then." Matt pulled the leftover beer across the table as Connor slid into his jacket. "You know, maybe Cutter wasn't so surprised. Maybe he was just proud of you."

Connor grinned, nodded to Matt, and hurried toward the door. Matt took a long sip of beer and raised his glass toward the overhead light. He saw his own face again, but this time it was reflected from across the room, from a sullen, dishevelled Matt Anderson lurking at the nearest table. Matt leaned back in his chair and waited.

"You still have to go back," said Future-Matt.

"I know," Matt sighed. "I'm working on it..."

xxxxx

When he returned to his flat, Becker crashed on his sofa without bothering to change clothes or think about dinner. His leg was killing him; he'd have to change the bandage soon, but he was too tired to even think about that. He desperately wanted to sleep.

He was just starting to drift- fitfully, wary of falling back into that dark abyss of screaming and regret that presented itself whenever he thought about Sarah Page too long- when he heard the most annoying sound. He was afraid, in his half-dreaming state, it might be some sonic attack from a future predator. It turned out to be his door buzzer.

With a groan of heartfelt disappointment, Becker pulled himself up with the aid of a crutch and staggered to the door. He opened it, expecting- he didn't know what. Landlord? Delivery person?

He did not expect Jess Parker, bearing six cartons of Chinese food, although perhaps he should have.

"Er- hello," he said. "I don't-"

Jess pushed past him, into the apartment. Becker could hardly object without losing his precarious balance. Before he knew what was happening, she was setting out food and preparing drinks and talking a mile a minute:

"You would not believe the evening I've had. You know about the anomaly and the dinosaur- I know it was an ornithomimus, but I don't like that. Do you prefer _eggasaurus _or _skinnyraptor_? Doesn't matter. Then I had to run a full diagnostic to make certain we wouldn't draw any more of those time anomalies, and _then_ the system crashed!"

"Jess," Becker murmured, still half-asleep. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh," she said, turning her brightest smile on him. "Thank Lester. He said- wait, let me get the voice right- 'Captain Becker is essential to this operation, and I must have him back. I'm sure I can trust you to nurse him back to health?'"

Becker laughed, not least because it was a dead-on Lester impersonation. "He said that?"

"Just that. I suppose it's his way of apologising. Don't worry, I'm still going to torment him for a while. I did make him hug me- twice! You should have seen how uncomfortable he got."

"Jess." Becker rested heavily on his dining table while the smells of the Chinese food wafted all around him. "This is all very sweet of you-"

"Yes, I know." Jess held up one of the cartons. "See, like our first date? I'll bet you've already forgotten. _Such_ a man."

Becker blinked. "We haven't had a date."

"Oh, that. Since we're both so busy and you keep delaying, I've made a new schedule. I'm reclassifying the bomb threat as a date. Also the insect thing, and the time we met at the market. So, you see, we're moving right along..."

He sighed. "Jess, thank you, but really, I'm exhausted."

"Lester thought you might say that. I'm to tell you I'm here on his direct orders, and you're to shut up and let me take care of you. You may file an official protest, if you like."

Becker groaned. The food did smell good, and he couldn't think of a good enough reason to argue with both of them. He rolled his eyes and limped back to the sofa. A moment later, Jess was sitting beside him with two full plates of food. He had to admit, it was not an unpleasant set-up. It should have been quite lovely. The only problem was, Becker dozed off halfway through the meal. He only half-remembered Jess covering him with a blanket. She stood over him, smiling and ruffling his hair.

"Ah, well. So much for our fourth date. Fifth date's the charm, anyway. You'll see..."

Becker managed a drowsy smile before drifting off to his best sleep in two full years.

xxxxx

Connor Temple hadn't even walked a block from the pub when he ran into Abby, walking the other way. Her face lit up when she saw him. It's funny, he'd seen her smile a thousand times, but it always filled him with that same, nervous exhilaration, especially when he realized the smile was for _him_, because she was happy to see him...

_Wait, why is she happy to see me? What's gone wrong? I get less nervous when she's cross..._

"Connor!" she said, hurrying up to him. "Emily said you'd be here. We have to talk."

"Yeah, I know. I was coming to-"

Abby put a finger to his lips, and he fell silent. After twenty or thirty years, he supposed that trick would get annoying. On the other hand, _someone_ had to devise a method of making him stop talking. Quite obviously, Connor hadn't had any luck shutting _himself_ up...

"I was coming to tell you," Abby said, "no more pressure about a date. In fact, I'm not setting a date at all- you are, in your own time. Whatever makes you comfortable is fine."

Connor opened his mouth to reply, but Abby seemed to have more, and she charged ahead.

"But Connor, if you're never going to set a date- if you want out- you're going to have to tell me honestly. You'll have to end it; I won't do it for you. I can't." She took a deep breath, blue eyes holding his. "I love you and I want to marry you. Believe it or not."

When she put it like that, the smile wasn't so scary, so Connor met it with his own. "How's three months from today?"

Abby blinked. "Three months? Just like that?"

"Why not? We've already had a long engagement- and a _really_ long courtship."

"Yeah, but... you changed your mind so soon?"

"Matt helped." He searched for words of his own; the one time they _didn't _come easily was when he really needed them. "Abby, have you ever been so lucky- so blindingly lucky that for a while, you couldn't even see how lucky you were?"

She smiled. "Yeah, once. I took in a stray to the flat, you know. Primitive creature. Left comic books on the floor. Rubbish at_ Guitar Hero_."

"Oh, _that_ hurts." Connor mimed a wound to the heart. "You know how to hurt a bloke."

"Well, I got to like having him around. Is that the kind of thing you mean?"

"Yup," he said. "Just like that."

Blue eyes. The whole of the future to consider. The fate of the world, depending on them. There was always something new to worry about. But if he was going to be scared either way, Connor figured he might as well take Abby's hand, because being afraid and being with her sounded a lot better than being afraid alone.

He kissed her, and they walked home holding hands.

xxxxx

**THE END**

...of this story. The sixth series will continue. Lester's old secrets come back to haunt the team as they fight to save a town from a futuristic plague in...

**Primeval 6.2: Something Old, Something New**

Coming Soon!


End file.
